In turbulent year for press freedom, journos were killed or arrested for showing spine as mainstream media peddled fabricated reports, ignored ethical boundaries
The fall of Indian journalism—especially mainstream institutional media—continued in 2025, with the quality and authenticity of reporting touching new lows, especially during the coverage of Operation Sindoor.
A handful of independent organisations and individuals did continue to show some spine, with some journalists paying with their lives or liberty for taking on the powers that be. It was definitely not easy to be an Indian journalist with a moral compass in the year that's ending.
Low ranking on global scale
In the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, India ranked 151st out of 180 countries (up from 159th in 2024), amid a “systemic strategy” to shackle media independence through legal and political pressure. As journalists continued to operate in a “very serious” or “severe” environment, at least two of them were killed, four were attacked, and six were arrested in the first four months of 2025 itself.
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Income-Tax authorities revoked the non-profit status of investigative outlets such as The Reporter’s Collective, while multiple YouTube news channels, including 4PM News, were abruptly blocked on national security grounds, and the website of Vikatan Plus was blocked apparently because it published a cartoon critical of the Narendra Modi government.
Independent journalists such as Ravish Kumar, content creators such as and Dhruv Rathee and Aakash Banerjee (The Deshbhakt), and outlets such as The Wire, Newslaundry, and HW News faced content-takedown notices and “gag lawsuits” from major corporate entities like the Adani Group, but continued to report on their activities nevertheless.
Murdered for investigative reporting
One of the most shocking cases came in the first month of the year itself, when independent regional journalist Mukesh Chandrakar was brutally murdered in Chhattisgarh. Chandrakar, whose YouTube channel Bastar Junction served as a critical voice for tribals, was widely respected for his deep local knowledge. He famously played a key role in facilitating the release of a CRPF commando abducted by Maoists in 2021.
Chandrakar went missing on January 1, after going to meet a local contractor, and his mutilated body was discovered on January 3, dumped in a septic tank in Bijapur, freshly sealed with concrete. It was subsequently revealed that he was killed for exposing financial irregularities in a Rs 120-crore road construction project. His reporting for outlets such as NDTV besides Bastar Junction had prompted a state government inquiry into the project.
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The prime suspect turned out to be his cousin, Suresh Chandrakar, a prominent contractor. Media watchdogs such as the Press Council of India and the Editors Guild of India, and international bodies like the UNESCO condemned the killing, highlighting the extreme risks faced by rural investigative journalists in India.
As journalists continued to operate in a “very serious” or “severe” environment, at least two of them were killed, four were attacked, and six were arrested in the first four months of 2025 itself.
Dainik Jagran reporter Raghvendra Bajpai faced a similar fate on March 8. He was shot dead on an overbridge in Uttar Pradesh, with his family alleging that he was targeted for his investigative reporting on land scams and paddy procurement irregularities.
Similarly, Dharmendra Singh Chauhan, working for Fast News India, was shot dead by unidentified assailants near his residence in Jhajjar, Haryana, on May 18. He frequently covered local administrative lapses and political developments.
Arrested and harassed
Another much-talked-about incident happened in March, when a digital news portal journalist in Guwahati was detained after questioning the managing director of the Assam Cooperative Apex Bank regarding alleged financial irregularities. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is a director of the said bank.
Dilwar Hussain Mozumder was arrested on March 25, charged under the BNS and the SC/ST Act for allegedly intimidating and making offensive remarks to a bank security guard. Immediately after being granted bail in the first case, he was rearrested on new charges on March 27. The second case involved allegations of trespassing and an attempt to steal crucial bank documents.
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He was released from Guwahati Central Jail on March 29 after receiving bail in both cases, but only after widespread protests by media bodies like the Press Club of India and the International Federation of Journalists.
Mozumder is widely recognized for his work with The CrossCurrent, a platform known for its investigative reporting on corruption in Assam. He is also an office-bearer of the Guwahati Press Club, and his arrest triggered rare mass protests from senior editors and reporters across the state.
No laughing matter
Well-known Tamil weekly magazine Ananda Vikatan faced similar harassment in February when its digital version Vikatan Plus published a satirical cartoon by Hasif Khan featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi shackled in chains while seated next to US President Donald Trump. The cartoon came amid reports of Indian immigrants being deported from the US in shackles.
Following a complaint by then Tamil Nadu BJP president K Annamalai on February 15, the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) ordered the website to be blocked under Section 69A of the IT Act.
Vikatan moved court, and on March 6, the Madras High Court passed an interim order directing the Centre to restore public access to the website, on condition that the latter temporarily remove the cartoon until the case was decided. It is still pending in court.
Fabricated stories, fake footage, ethical failure
While these handful of media organisations and individuals were paying dearly for doing their jobs, most of the “mainstream” media outlets were having a field day pandering to nationalistic sentiments if not directly peddling government propaganda. And it wasn’t more glaring than the coverage of Operation Sindoor.
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During the April-May Indo-Pakistan conflict, several prominent news channels and newspapers broadcast fabricated stories, such as claims that India had taken control of Islamabad, destroyed Karachi port, or arrested Pakistan’s Army Chief.
Research by the Think Tank Journal found that some channels’ war-related “reports” were up to 99.15 per cent fake. Mainstream channels such as Aaj Tak, News18, and India Today were accused of broadcasting purely fictional reports. Multiple outlets aired old footage of Israel’s Iron Dome and falsely presented them as live visuals of Indian defence systems in Jaisalmer.
Deepfakes and AI-manipulated battlefield footage gained millions of views on social media and were often amplified by mainstream media outlets without verification. Shockingly, several news platforms falsely labelled a religious scholar and educator from Jammu and Kashmir, Qari Mohammad Iqbal, as a “Pakistani terrorist” after he was killed in cross-border shelling.
Egocentric and misogynistic
Another major controversy erupted in October when female journalists were barred from attending a press conference held by the visiting Taliban Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, at the Afghan Embassy in New Delhi.
While a handful of media organisations and individuals were paying dearly for doing their jobs, most of the “mainstream” outlets were having a field day pandering to nationalistic sentiments if not directly peddling government propaganda.
While the Indian government washed its hands of the fiasco, saying it had nothing to do with the order, male journalists nonchalantly attended the men-only briefing without raising any voice for their female colleagues. Critics and several senior female journalists argued that their male colleagues should have walked out in solidarity instead of participating in a discriminatory event.
Also read: How Mozumdar's arrest became a moment of reckoning for Assam journalists
However, the Indian media as a collective did manage to put up a fight in this instance. Senior journalists and media bodies such as the Editors Guild of India condemned the exclusion as a “blatant display of misogyny” and an insult to India’s democratic values. Following the intense backlash, the Taliban delegation held a subsequent press meeting on October 12, where female journalists were invited and seated in the front row. Muttaqi dismissed the previous exclusion as a “technical issue” caused by short notice.
However, the egocentric face of Indian journalism had been exposed by then.
Shameless voyeurs
Another shocking low was the coverage of ailing Bollywood star Dharmendra, who breathed his last on November 24. But before that, the media managed to “kill” him several times, with false reports of his death doing the rounds repeatedly, and the media hounding the family relentlessly and even airing a leaked ICU video of the ailing actor.
Even as the family repeatedly requested privacy, every media outlet seemed intent on breaking the news of his death first, whenever it happened, and condolences kept pouring in even though the actor briefly responded to treatment and was taken home by his family.
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In another incidence of harassment by a so-called journalist that made headlines, a YouTuber repeatedly posed questions about Tamil actress Gouri Kishan’s weight during a press meet in Chennai for her film Others.
While the actress took on the YouTuber—a veteran film journalist—calling his questions “highly disrespectful, unnecessary, and stupid”, her co-star Aditya Madhavan faced some criticism for remaining silent. He later apologised and said he simply “froze” because the question caught him off guard, but the incident once again exposed the nadir of Indian page 3 journalism.
