A Fourth Pillar With No Foundation of Its Own
Every functioning democracy rests on three constitutionally sanctioned branches of government: the legislature that writes the law, the executive that enforces it, and the judiciary that interprets it. Journalism is often called the fourth pillar of democracy, yet it is the only one of the four that holds no formal power at all. It cannot pass a law, issue a verdict, or command an army. It has no constitution written in its name and no article guaranteeing its permanence. What it has instead is far more fragile and, in some ways, far more remarkable: the trust of the public and the ability to make information available to people who would otherwise never see it.
That fragility is precisely what makes journalism essential. A press that must earn its authority every single day, through accuracy and credibility rather than statute, is a press that is directly answerable to the people it serves rather than to the institutions it covers. When it works as intended, journalism is the mechanism by which citizens govern the governors, not by casting votes alone, but by knowing enough to cast them wisely, and by holding elected and unelected power alike to account in the interval between elections.
When the Fourth Pillar Cracks
That mechanism is under visible strain in India today. India fell to 157th out of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders, a six-place drop from the previous year, and the organisation noted that global press freedom conditions had reached their lowest point in 25 years, with more than half the world’s countries now classified as “difficult” or “very serious”. RSF pointed to a rise in violence against journalists, highly concentrated media ownership, and a growing number of outlets with overtly political alignment as central reasons for India’s decline.
Ownership concentration in particular has reshaped the landscape. The report noted that one business conglomerate close to the prime minister owns more than 70 media outlets reaching at least 800 million Indians, and that the 2022 acquisition of NDTV, long considered one of the country’s few genuinely independent mainstream broadcasters, by another conglomerate close to the government was widely read as signalling the end of pluralism in India’s mainstream media. The same report noted that Indian media rely heavily on government advertising revenue, giving authorities leverage to pressure outlets into softer coverage, and that journalists critical of those in power are routinely subjected to harassment, intimidation, and even arbitrary arrests.
The Stories That Stopped Being “News”
Beyond overt pressure, critics argue a quieter failure has taken hold inside newsrooms: an entire category of the population has simply stopped counting as newsworthy. Veteran journalist Kalpana Sharma has argued that India’s press freedom slide is only half the story; the other half is a mainstream media that has effectively decided the poor, the working class and the voiceless are no longer news. She points out that newspapers such as The Hindu, the Times of India and the Indian Express once employed dedicated labour reporters whose job was to document the conditions of working people, a beat that largely disappeared once news outlets began defining “news” as whatever would attract the most eyeballs. The result, she argues, is a media landscape technically free from formal censorship but functionally dedicated to covering only those with economic and political weight.
Citizens Step Into the Gap
It is precisely this gap that ordinary citizens and independent journalists have increasingly moved to fill, often armed with little more than a smartphone and a willingness to show up where established outlets do not. Grassroots journalists from marginalised communities, including Dalit and Muslim reporters, have begun challenging mainstream narratives directly, using digital outlets to surface underreported issues. One such platform, The Mooknayak, meaning “the leader of the voiceless”, was founded in 2021 by a Dalit journalist seeking to bridge what she described as a widening gap in representation, amplifying the voices of people mainstream coverage routinely neglects. A growing number of independent news portals have launched over the past decade specifically to change how minority communities are covered, allowing people to report their own stories rather than waiting to be reported on.
Citizen-driven reporting has also stepped in during moments when mainstream coverage arguably made things worse rather than better. During a period of heightened India-Pakistan tensions earlier this year, sections of Indian mainstream media were criticised for flooding the public with fake news, doctored visuals and sensationalist coverage that fuelled mass anxiety, prompting fact-checkers to call the coverage a national embarrassment that misled citizens during a critical moment. In episodes like these, independent fact-checkers and citizen journalists, verifying footage and publishing corrections in real time on social platforms, have often done more to protect the public’s grip on reality than outlets with far larger audiences and resources.
The same pattern has played out around protest movements this year, where footage recorded and shared by demonstrators themselves has repeatedly reached the public before, or instead of, coverage from established outlets, shaping national conversation in ways that once depended entirely on a handful of newsrooms.
Fragile, Contested, and Still Indispensable
None of this means citizen journalism is a flawless substitute for professional reporting; it lacks the editorial infrastructure and institutional accountability of established newsrooms, and is just as capable of spreading misinformation as correcting it. But its rise is itself evidence of journalism’s underlying importance: when the formal press narrows its focus or loses public trust, the demand for accountability does not disappear; it simply finds a new outlet.
That, ultimately, is what makes journalism worth defending even though it holds no constitutional power of its own. It survives on credibility rather than command, which makes it perpetually vulnerable to concentrated ownership, government pressure and public indifference alike. Indian authorities have, in the past, dismissed such international rankings as misinformed and unscientific, a familiar response wherever press performance is measured against public expectation. But the growth of citizen journalism in response to mainstream media’s blind spots suggests the underlying appetite for accountability has not weakened, only the willingness of some institutions to supply it. As long as that appetite exists, journalism’s core function will keep finding a way to survive.
References:
- The Wire. “India is 157th Out of 180 Countries on RSF’s 2026 World Press Freedom Index,” April 30, 2026.
- Indian Printer & Publisher. “India slips in press freedom index again, ranks 157,” May 1, 2026.
- Countercurrents. “Press Under Pressure: India Slips Further in the Global Freedom Index,” May 3, 2026.
- Newslaundry. “Press freedom index puts focus on newsrooms telling India’s hardest stories,” May 7, 2026.
- We Are One Humanity. “A Focus on India’s Press Freedom,” May 18, 2026.
- Al Jazeera Media Institute. “Breaking Barriers: The Rise of Citizen Journalists in India’s Fight for Media Inclusion.”
. . .