A. Introduction

The first newspaper in India was published in 1780 by James Hicky, an Irishman. It was named the "Bengal Gazette". It announced itself a "weekly political & commercial paper open to all parties and influenced by none". Most of the paper was occupied by advertisements. It's circulation was 200 copies.

By 1792 about 10 news papers  were launched through India, of which 3 weeklies were from kolkata.

In 1799 East India administration passed regulation to increase it's control over the press.

The Times Of India was started by Mr.Knight in 1861, later in 1875 he started 'The Statesman'.

Around the same time another paper 'Amrit Bazar Patrika' was able to establish itself in Kolkata.

Amrit Bazar Patrika inspired the freedom fighter Lokamanya Tilak to start 'Kesari' in Pune.

He used Kesari to start anti-cow slaughter societies and ganesh mandals and revived chatrapathi shivaji cult.

An important observation of this period of press is that the english dailies were loyal to the British govt, while the vernacular press was strongly Nationalist.

The big English dailies were "The Times Of India", "Statesman", "Calcutta Gazette", "Indian Gazette", "Bengal Journal", "The Asiatic Miscellany", "Madras Courier", "Calcutta  Chronicle", "The Asiatic Mirror".

The vernacular national papers were "Kesari", "Bande Mataram", "Kal", "Shakti", "Bombay Samachar", "The Brahmanical Magazine" and the "Bengal Gazette".

During this period more papers were run by the British. It must be noted that there were distinctly two camps of press represented by the British on one side and by the Indian owned press on the other.

The British always tried to suppress the Indian press with their regulations and even their own nationals who supported Indian nationalism were not spared.

The British enacted Vernacular Press Act - 1878, to suppress the Indian newspapers.

Later a series of acts and regulations were created to contain the freedom of the nationalist press even till the time of Independence.

1907 : Arrests and prosecution against journalists & press.

1910 : Indian Press Act - Asked for heavy security deposits.

1914-1918 : The same Indian Press Act was executed on the papers who were not on the British side in the first world war.

1919 : Jallianwala bagh massacre hit the Indian press further.

1942 - till Independence in 1947 : Suppression of the press continued.

Interestingly, even after Independence the suppression of the press continued.

Jawaharlal Nehru who was an active journalist during freedom movement, was surprisingly unhappy with the press freedom.

Several new acts to contain the press freedom were formed over the years after framing the constitution of India.

1954 : Press Commission

1955 : Working Journalists Act

1956 : News Paper Act

1965 : Establishment of Press Council

After Nehru, Indira Gandi contributed to further reduce the press freedom. Apart from declaring a state of Emergency in 1975, she horrendously stamped the iron foot on the press.

Article 19(1) a - freedom of press was ignored.

Heavy censorship was done in the name of ;maintaining public order'.

1975, Dec 8th ordinance - banned press council, banned all publications.

In the 21 months of emergency - 253 journalists were detained and 7 foreign correspondents were expelled.

Emergency is precisely the point at which journalism slipped into the abyss of disgrace.

A degenerative metamorphosis has started in the Indian journalism with this incident, where its DNA was entirely replaced with corruption, business interest  and pro-congress bias that changed itself into a dangerous and untamed anti national force that it has now become.

From the budding desire of James Hiky in exposing the east India company's exploitation of India to shameless peddling of lies and vested interest, journalism today in India has become nothing more than a network of news traders who live on peoples' trust only to push them into darkness.

News trading in the name of journalism is happening daily in front of our eyes with our own choice and that is something to be recognized and stopped for the well-being of this great nation.

This text contains the story of the degeneration of journalism to it's current form and the current & future threats it poses to this nation.

This effort is to enlighten the reader about the ongoing assault by the news traders in destroying journalism and our perception of reality to ultimately control our legislative, judicial systems all with a single motive - to take away this nation from it's citizens.

Journalism needs to be brought back, and that can only happen by removing the veil of journalism from the face of news-trading.

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