Rethinking The Fourth Estate: A personal take on India's Press

When I was a kid, I hated journalists. I thought they were invasive, shallow, and loud.

My consumption of media (Disney shows and horror movies) portrayed journalists as apathetic beings uncaring towards others and their boundaries. Well, I guess in Hannah Montana, it wasn’t journalists, but rather paparazzi; nevertheless, it was all the same. I often visualised journalists as vultures, circling around and preying on the weak.

My limited experience with news channels, by that I mean the 5 seconds of news I saw on the tv when I entered my parents’ room, did not stop me from forming an opinion. News was loud, argumentative, and grotesque. That was my conclusion.

As a budding teenager, I was completely removed from anything besides myself. My awareness and interest in the world around me expanded only in the 11th grade. All credit due to my very chatty (and lovely) history and political science teacher. The more I learnt about India’s history, the more I learnt about the history of the press in India.

I began to realise just how misinformed I was. Journalism was a form of resistance and rebellion. And unlike my childhood beliefs, journalists, well, at least the ethical practitioners, were principled. Today, as a student in a journalism-adjacent course, I’m aware that journalism is “The systematic and reliable dissemination of public information, public opinion, and public entertainment by mass media communication.”

India’s evolving journey with journalism began much before the term was ever coined, starting with early structured information systems. The earliest publications were neither on screens nor paper but carved into rocks and pillars. Emperor Ashoka utilised scriptures to disseminate royal policies. Under the Mughal rule, official news writers, known as Waqia Navis, reported events from provinces to the emperor through handwritten newsletters called Akhbars.

Modern journalism only truly began to take shape after the arrival of the British. In 1776, William Bolts was unsuccessful in his attempt to publish the first newspaper in India and was shut down by the East India Company. The first successful newspaper was published in 1780 by James Augustus Hicky.

His newspaper, The Bengal Gazette, also known as Calcutta General Advertiser, was termed as a “weekly political and commercial paper open to all parties but influenced by none.”It contained political commentary, letters to the editor, scandals, and satire. It criticised the colonial government. Hicky was arrested in 1781 for his critical writings, and his press was confiscated. Although it was short-lived, the Bengal Gazette marked the beginning of journalism in India.

The British soon understood that the very existence of a free press in India as a colony would be jeopardised by the potential of the free press to mobilise public opinion and disseminate nationalist sentiments. The Press Regulations of 1799, the Licensing Act of 1857, the Vernacular Press Act of 1878, and the Press Act of 1910 were some of the tough laws that regulated the press in the 19th century. In an attempt to curb nationalist passion, the Vernacular Press Act focused on publications in Indian languages.

Yet, the Indian language press grew. The pioneers were the Serampore Missionaries with Samachar Darpan, and Raja Ram Mohan Roy with his Persian newspaper Mirat-ul-Akbar. Roy stated that his object was to lay before the public such articles of intelligence as may increase their experience and tend to their social improvement, and to indicate to the rulers a knowledge of the real situation of their subjects. He later ceased publication in protest against the Press Regulations. The Bombay Samachar was founded in 1822.

The nationalist press grew in strength during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Publications such as Kesari, edited by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, defied the Government’s attempts to crush nationalist aspirations. The Amrita Bazar Patrika began publishing in English after the Vernacular Press Act came into force, since the Act did not apply to English dailies. In the period 1908-1912, new laws such as the Press Act of 1910 granted the Government the power to demand a security fee for “offensive matter,” and nearly 1,000 publications were prosecuted.

After Independence, the freedom of the press is guaranteed by Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, but is liable to “reasonable restrictions” by Article 19(2). The Press Council of India was established in 1966 as an “autonomous, statutory, quasi-judicial” body.

The Emergency was declared on 25 June 1975 by Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed under Article 352(1) on the advice of Indira Gandhi. The civil rights were suspended, and the news media were strictly controlled. The censors appointed by the government had to scrutinise all news articles about the Emergency. In a gesture of silent protest, publications such as The Statesman and The Indian Express published blank editorials, while The Times of India published a mock obituary notice for “D.E.M. O'Cracy.”

Following the Emergency in 1977, the Indian media restored its constitutional protections, and the Press Council of India was revamped to uphold press freedom and ethics. Since that time, the Indian media has undergone a fundamental change influenced by numerous political, legal, and technological elements. India has been ranked very low in the World Press Freedom Index, ranking 151 out of 180 countries in 2025, due to concerns about the decreased freedom of the media, legal restrictions, and corporate power. Currently, the media face a very challenging situation as new avenues for reporting, using digital media, have been accompanied by greater competition and the challenge of disinformation. While technology has made news more available and provided avenues for alternative media, the media face challenges of lawsuits, cyberbullying, and editorial restrictions when reporting on sensitive issues. The need for regulation in the media industry, the use of AI in the media, and court rulings in favour of the freedom of the press are some of the issues that the media face in this rapidly changing world.