The Big Story:

Steven Spielberg’s political drama The Post has taken the box office by storm across the world and has earned its female lead Meryl Streep her 21st Oscar nomination. The movie depicts the story of The Washington Post’s attempts to publish articles based on the “Pentagon Papers”, an internal study of the United States government. The study showed that four consecutive presidents of the country lied to the people on the purpose of the US war in Vietnam that began right after the World War II in the 1940s and was sustained for three decades. A war that the presidents knew could not be won was stretched to protect the image of the US as a superpower during the Cold War years.

It was The New York Times that led the reporting of the Pentagon Papers. But within days, President Richard Nixon moved through his attorney general and obtained the first prior restraint order on a media house in US history. The New York Times was barred from publishing more revelations. But The Washington Post moved in and published many more parts of the damning report, risking a possible contempt of court proceedings and a jail term for its publisher Katharine Graham and Executive Editor Benjamin Bradlee. Director Spielberg could not have chosen a better time to make this movie, given the attack that the US media is currently facing from the Donald Trump administration.

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Contrast the role of The New York Times and The Washington Post with what is happening in India today. Television coverage of politics has hardly put the Narendra Modi administration to any serious test, with interviews bordering on public relation exercises playing out on several channels. Pressure from the establishment has seen newspapers take down articles from their websites at the drop of a hat. The Opposition is scrutinised more than those in power. Reporters are threatened with cases for exposing government inefficiency and the few media house that do dare to publish stories difficult to those in power see defamation cases against them.

Journalism in India could take a lot of inspiration in how The New York Times and The Washington Post functioned in the 1970s. Their reportage on the Pentagon Papers and the subsequent Watergate scandal led to Nixon finally resigning in 1974.

While The Post is a must watch for journalists, its lessons are not exclusive to the media. The movie tells you why a robust higher judiciary is crucial for press freedom in a democracy. When the two newspapers challenged injunctions against them before the Supreme Court, the judiciary came to their rescue.

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In his opinion, Justice Hugo Black tells us in an assertive tone what the duty of journalists should be: “The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”

Such judgements that directly affect the highest offices of the executive are possible because the judiciary labours to keep its integrity unimpeachable. The integrity of the court depends solely on the integrity of the judges, which is why the recent developments in the Supreme Court of India following the unprecedented press conference by four judges on January 12 have raised serious questions on judicial freedom. The judiciary must understand that judicial independence is not just about leaving the judges to themselves. The “penumbras of rights” it emanates is crucial for press freedom and the very functioning of the democracy.

The Big Scroll

  • Watch Washington Post’s Katherine Graham on her momentous decision to publish the Pentagon Papers.  

Punditry

  1. Pressures of a different Dalit imagination are colliding against strategies of containment of an old politics, writes Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express. 
  2.   In the fractious run-up to the Karnataka Assembly elections, the first round may have gone to the Congress, says Valerian Rodrigues in The Hindu. 
  3.   Farmers need structural reforms, crop diversification and greater public investment rather than subsidies and price support, argues this editorial in Mint. 

Giggles

Don’t miss

Prakash Karat’s line against allying with Congress gives BJP the upper-hand in his Kerala hometown.

“The Congress is even ready to accept an independent councillor as the municipality’s chairperson if the CPI(M) agrees to join forces with it to unseat the BJP. “The BJP does not have the majority so its rule can be ended the moment the CPI(M) and the Congress decide to do so,” said the Congress legislator from Palakkad Shafi Parambil. “The CPI(M) just has to issue a statement. We are not claiming the chairmanship of the municipality. Both parties can even back an independent councillor to remove the BJP from Palakkad.”