India: Industry crisis looms over women journalists amidst Covid-19 pandemic

Covid-19 has come for the news industry in India, and not in a good way.

Publications such as Business Standard, India Ahead News and Indian Express have notified employees of salary cuts. Employees in Quint have been forced into taking leave without pay, while others were forced to take a pay cut.  

Some publications have asked their teams to hand in their resignations. News Nation, for instance, has laid off 15 journalists from its English digital team. 

Forbes India and Outlook have ceased print operations, while publications such as Hamara Mahanagar have closed shop altogether. 

Taking to Facebook, Nona Walia said that the entire Sunday Magazine team from Times of India has been forced to go on leave. “Got a call from my boss Poonam Singh. Sacked after 24 years from a company I served with love for more than two decades,” she wrote. 

Other journalists are living in a culture of fear and silence, afraid to speak out against their organizations, lest they too get the axe. 

Pallabi Munsi, a journalist based in Bangalore, said that the current situation has been made worse by the pandemic, but the industry was in trouble to begin with. 

“For the past decade, India’s newspaper industry has stood out as a rare beacon of hope for the print media, which has seen sharp declines in readership in the West. According to the Indian Readership Survey (IRS), the overall readership of newspapers had grown from 407 million readers in 2017 to 425 million readers at the end of the first quarter of 2019. Now, the coronavirus is threatening to do what the Great Recession of 2008 couldn’t: deal a crippling blow to the industry,” she wrote. 

Cyril Sam, a journalist based in India, has been documenting the layoffs. He says that the economic fallout from the pandemic is still unfolding. “So far, nearly 100 journalists have lost their jobs,” he told CFWIJ.  

“India is currently under a lockdown, which goes on till 3 May. Those laid off cannot look for jobs until then,” he added. Cyril notes that the industry already had fewer women to begin with. Covid-19 is only going to make things worse. 

His thoughts were echoed by Bia, who was one of the 45 employees asked to go on leave without pay.  Bia* said that she had noticed a slowdown in the industry before Covid-19 hit.

“There were layoffs last year as well, but when concerns were raised with some of our bosses, we were assured that everything is under control,” she says. “The pandemic only became the latest flashpoint. What surprises me is why it took the management so long to decide to inform us of what was coming. I was told three days before I was forced to take leave without pay for an indefinite period. Personally, I found it to be very humiliating and insulting. I was shocked and it took me 48 hours for it to sink in,” she shared about her experience. 

The future does not look particularly promising. 

“We will be getting the salary for April and they’ve offered another month’s cash assistance, but this is a period of lockdown – there are no vacancies, there are no jobs and this has definitely pushed us into a spiral of uncertainty and chaos,” she said.

In such a situation, journalists are being forced to turn to their savings to get by. Bia has savings that will help her make her way through two months. “After that If I don’t find work till July or August I’ll have to move in with a friend,” she said. 

On the other hand, Journalist Rosamma Thomas disagreed that the current situation is solely the result of the pandemic. “COVID-19 is being used as an excuse. Even months before this, there were harsh measures afoot. I worked with the Times of India, and during the appraisal period in March last year, I was told by my boss that my body language betrayed a reluctance to work!” she said, explaining that higher-ups were looking for reasons to deny promotions and pay raises.  

Rosamma shared the story of another female colleague who had worked with the group for three decades. She, too, was given a poor appraisal and quit as a result. “She was extremely bitter that after all her years of hard work she was treated like that. Her mother had been sick and she had to take time off to help her - which was enough reason to rate her work poorly!” she recalled. 

The pandemic is a grave challenge for the industry, but many feels that things weren’t that great even before it hit. 

“There are several women in fear of being asked to go. Even before COVID, there were women who felt they were not being treated fairly, but forced to continue working because of the need for a regular income to support their family. Many of those who take the plunge into uncertain freelance work are single, with no dependents,” Rosamma informed. 

In India, women are facing a newsroom that is predominantly male and upper caste. “Imagine if you’re both a woman and of a lower caste. Even the possibility of finding a job as a media person is remote,” Rosamma noted.  

The current work climate also means heightened levels of stress and anxiety for women journalists. 

“As a media professional, it has been a very overwhelming experience covering stories in the last couple of months,” Bia said, noting that journalists were thrown from turbulence and riots into the pandemic.

Journalist Nikita Jain said that this is a difficult time for all journalists. “A lot of people have been affected, especially after Covid-19. Personally, I have not been impacted – my organization is a very small organization – but I know a lot of people who are in trouble because of it,” Nikita said.

However, even though she has not had to face a pay cut or been forced to go on leave (or worse) Nikita said that there is extreme uncertainty in the industry at the moment. 

“We have this constant fear of pay cuts or that something will happen. We’ve been told that there won’t be pay cuts right now, but we’ve been told that there will be no holidays or days offs,” she said.

This situation is made worse by the fact that her organization simply cannot afford to pay for protective gear or transport.  

“We’re not provided equipment and we have to take care of ourselves, including masks and suits. My organization isn’t able to provide cabs, and I have to pay INR 5-6000 for one trip because I have to visit a lot of places,” she said.

“We don’t earn that much as journalists, and if pay cuts happen, they will affect us,” she added. “We’ve very anxious, there’s a lot of anxiety. And there’s more pressure to keep on working so that the organization doesn’t find a loophole to fire you,” she added. 

Geeta Seshu, a researcher working on gender issues, explained that the lockdown had a terrible effect on the media industry. 

“We are still processing the extent of the damage, but we do know of prominent media houses that have affected these very harsh and totally unethical measures. At a time of great uncertainty and anxiety because of the worldwide pandemic, these measures add to insecurity and fear,” she said. 

Departments or pages that typically employ more women have been the first to go. “While it has affected all, irrespective of gender, the decision to axe news features or editorial-marketing sections first, where the staff are still predominantly female, has very alarming implications for the employment opportunities for women in journalism,” Geeta told CFWIJ. 

The current situation is making several women journalists reconsider the space they take up in the industry. For many, it may not even be a question of whether they want to stick around, but if they can afford to. 

“The fact is job losses and layoffs will push women journalists into freelancing or into ancillary media work like PR or marketing. It also makes it much more difficult for them to re-enter formal employment. Women journalists play a very important role as news-gatherers. They uncover hidden angles and make women's voices visible. Losing them would set back the gains of the last few decades,” Geeta said.