Criminalisation of media reporting on the government response to the Covid-19 pandemic in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh : Freedom of press in peril

Book chapter

Bari, Muhammad Ehteshamul and Naz, Safia. (2024). Criminalisation of media reporting on the government response to the Covid-19 pandemic in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh : Freedom of press in peril. In Human Rights During the COVID-19 Pandemic : The South Asian Experience pp. 89 - 99 Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-1480-3_6
AuthorsBari, Muhammad Ehteshamul and Naz, Safia
Abstract

Press freedom is one of the fundamental pillars of any democratic society proclaiming the rule of law. For a free press keeps the government accountable by critically scrutinising the manner in which the latter exercises its functions. Accordingly, the Constitutions of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have either explicitly or implicitly made the guarantee of press freedom an integral part of their constitutionally entrenched bill of rights. Although the guarantee of freedom of press under these three Constitutions is not absolute, this chapter will stress that any restrictions imposed on this freedom must not be ‘arbitrary, unfair or based on irrational considerations’. Subsequently, this chapter will make it manifestly evident that the governments in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic unduly imperilled press freedom in an effort to shield from scrutiny the inadequacy of the measures that they had taken to shut down the circulation of the coronavirus.

Keywordspress freedom ; Covid-19; democracy; government; India; Pakistan; Bangladesh
Page range89 - 99
Year01 Jan 2024
Book titleHuman Rights During the COVID-19 Pandemic : The South Asian Experience
PublisherSpringer Singapore
Place of publicationSingapore
Edition1
ISBN978-981-97-1479-7
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-1480-3_6
Web address (URL)https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-97-1480-3_6
Open accessPublished as non-open access
Research or scholarlyResearch
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Publication dates
Online28 Apr 2024
Publication process dates
Deposited27 Jun 2024
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© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024

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