How Media and RTI Drive Good Governance

A healthy democracy runs on two things that often go together: an informed public and a government willing to be watched. The Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, gave citizens the legal key to open government files, and the media (both print and electronic) became one of the most powerful users of that key. Together, they form a partnership that keeps public authorities honest, exposes wrongdoing, and pushes the idea that power must answer to the people it serves.

Why the media and RTI belong together 🔗

The media has always been called the fourth pillar of democracy, but that role becomes far more effective when journalists can actually access official records. Before 2005, government functioning in India was largely shielded by the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, 1923, which kept the entire process of governance behind a wall of secrecy. Reporters relied on leaks, unnamed sources, and guesswork. The RTI Act changed this fundamentally by giving every citizen, including journalists, the right to demand information from any public authority.

The connection between the press and the right to know is not just practical, it is constitutional. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the right to information is implicit in the right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. In the landmark Raj Narain case (1975), the Court observed that people in a democracy have a right to know every public act and every public transaction of their functionaries. The RTI Act simply provides the machinery to exercise this already-existing right.

What media freedom really means 🔗

Media freedom is more than the right to publish. It includes editorial independence, the freedom to investigate without fear, and the right to circulate information widely. It is this bundle of freedoms that allows reporters to frame questions, gather evidence, and share findings with the public. When any of these is squeezed, democracy itself weakens, because citizens lose the ability to judge their government on the basis of facts.

How RTI transformed investigative journalism 🔗

For Indian journalists, the RTI Act became what many now call an everyday research tool. Reporters use it to pull out documents, file notings, expenditure records, and tour details that would earlier have taken years to surface, if at all. Investigative journalist Shyamlal Yadav, for instance, used RTI to uncover stories ranging from foreign junkets of ministers whose travel miles added up to 256 times the circumference of the Earth, to insane asset declarations and money channelled to dubious NGOs. His work shows how persistence with a simple application form can produce reporting that moves policy and shifts public opinion.

The real power of RTI in journalism lies in three things: it forces record-keeping, it makes denial difficult, and it leaves a paper trail. Over 17.5 million applications were filed in the first ten years after the Act came into force, with more than 4,800 applications filed on average every day. A large share of the most publicly visible outcomes came through journalists who turned raw government records into stories that ordinary readers could understand.

Scams that came to light 🔗

RTI has been central to exposing some of the biggest scandals in recent Indian history. Information obtained through RTI revealed major scams such as the Commonwealth Games scam and the Coal Allocation scam, and helped uncover inefficiencies and leakages in the Public Distribution System in Uttar Pradesh. The Adarsh Housing Society case in Mumbai is another well-known example, where a building constructed in violation of rules, with flats meant for war widows going instead to bureaucrats and politicians, unravelled after RTI-based reporting and led to resignations and legal action. In each case, the pattern was the same: a journalist or activist filed an application, shared the documents with a newsroom, and the story did the rest.

Media as the bridge between citizens and the State 🔗

Most people will never file an RTI application themselves. They will, however, read a newspaper, watch a news bulletin, or scroll through a news website. This is where the press plays its translator role. It converts dense government documents into readable reports, connects scattered data points, and puts them in front of an audience large enough to create pressure. Without this bridge, information obtained under RTI would often sit unused in activists’ cupboards.

This role also works the other way. Strong reporting informs citizens about their own rights and encourages more people to use RTI. As studies have noted, the major sources of awareness about the RTI Act for ordinary people are mass media like television channels, newspapers, magazines and journals, along with word of mouth. Every news story about an RTI success quietly teaches readers that the law exists, that it works, and that they too can use it.

An informed citizenry and accountability 🔗

Good governance rests on transparency, accountability, participation, and responsiveness. The media, equipped with RTI, advances all four. Citizens who understand how a scheme is being implemented can question delays. Citizens who know how contracts are awarded can spot favouritism. When public officials know that their decisions may end up on the front page, they tend to be more careful, and that caution itself is a form of prevention.

The print and electronic media’s complementary roles 🔗

Print and electronic media bring different strengths to the RTI ecosystem. Newspapers and magazines are better suited to long-form investigation, where hundreds of pages of documents must be analysed, cross-checked, and stitched into a narrative. Television and digital platforms, on the other hand, bring speed, visual impact, and the kind of reach that turns a document-based story into a national conversation within hours.

Online and regional media have added another layer. Vernacular newspapers often cover local RTI findings about ration shops, school mid-day meals, road construction and pension leakages, which rarely make it to English mainstream dailies. This is where RTI-based journalism is arguably doing its most practical work, by reporting on schemes that directly affect household incomes and rural welfare.

Exposing corruption, inefficiency, and rights violations 🔗

Much of the media’s RTI-driven reporting falls into three broad buckets: financial wrongdoing, administrative inefficiency, and human rights violations. Under financial wrongdoing, reporters have exposed inflated contracts, benami beneficiaries, and misuse of public funds. Under administrative inefficiency, they have tracked delays in welfare delivery, missing records, and non-functional schemes. Under human rights violations, they have documented custodial issues, denial of entitlements to marginalised communities, and failures in rehabilitation programmes.

A striking early example is the work of the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti in Assam, which filed an RTI application in 2007 that revealed irregularities in the distribution of food meant for people below the poverty line, leading to investigation of allegations and action against several high-profile officials. News coverage of such cases turns local grievances into systemic reforms.

The risks journalists and activists face 🔗

This work is not without danger. RTI activists and journalists who dig into sensitive files are often harassed, threatened, or worse. According to the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, 99 RTI activists have lost their lives, 180 have been assaulted, and 187 have been threatened since 2006. In early 2025, the case of freelance journalist Mukesh Chandrakar in Chhattisgarh, whose body was found in a septic tank after he reported on alleged corruption in a road construction project, drew wide condemnation and highlighted the risks faced by reporters investigating corruption in remote regions.

The lesson is that transparency laws are only as strong as the protection offered to those who use them. A robust whistleblower framework, swift investigation of attacks, and solidarity from newsrooms are essential if RTI journalism is to continue producing public-interest stories.

Current challenges to the media-RTI partnership 🔗

The partnership between the media and RTI is facing newer pressures. One concern is the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, which critics argue could curb access to government records by broadening what counts as “personal information”. The worry is that information exposing corruption involving senior officials or ministers may not be publishable without their consent, effectively curbing investigative journalism. Journalists and transparency advocates have challenged these provisions in court, pointing out that most robust data protection laws globally provide clear exemptions for the press.

Other challenges run deeper. Information Commissions face large pendency, with over 4 lakh appeals and complaints remaining pending across the country in 2024, and penalties on Public Information Officers being imposed in only about 2% of eligible cases. Vacant posts, delayed appointments, and weak enforcement dilute the very accountability the Act was meant to deliver. When commissions are slow, journalists lose weeks or months waiting for information, and time-sensitive stories go cold.

Keeping the spirit of the Act alive 🔗

For the media-RTI relationship to stay strong, three things matter. First, Information Commissions need to be fully staffed and independent, so that appeals are decided quickly. Second, proactive disclosure under Section 4 of the Act, which requires authorities to publish information so that citizens need minimum recourse to formal requests, must be taken seriously. Third, journalists and civil society must continue training citizens, especially in rural areas, to use the law themselves.

What good governance looks like with a free press and an active RTI 🔗

When the media uses RTI well, governance tends to look different. Welfare schemes reach more of the intended beneficiaries because leakages are visible. Public money is spent more carefully because officials know expenditure can be pulled up at any time. Ordinary citizens grow more confident in raising questions because they see others doing it successfully in the newspapers. Slowly, a culture of openness replaces a culture of secrecy, and that shift is the real marker of democratic maturity.

Good governance is not only about efficient delivery of services. It is also about the relationship between the State and the citizen. A free media that uses RTI responsibly keeps that relationship honest, turning government from something that happens to people into something that is done with them.

What do you think? If you had to file a single RTI application today about a civic issue in your neighbourhood, what would you ask for, and which platform of the media do you believe would do the most justice to that information?

References

1. https://docs.manupatra.in/newsline/articles/Upload/AC9CD2C7-B8AD-4C5A-B910-3751BFE5CB28.pdf
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Information_Act,_2005
3. https://www.routledge.com/Journalism-Through-RTI-Information-Investigation-Impact/Yadav/p/book/9781032906973
4. https://www.pmfias.com/rti-act-2005/
5. https://www.journalofpoliticalscience.com/uploads/archives/5-2-49-647.pdf
6. https://www.ijhssi.org/papers/v2(3)/version-1/B231122.pdf
7. https://pwonlyias.com/editorial-analysis/right-to-information-rti-act/
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_India
9. https://thefederal.com/category/news/rti-dpdp-act-reduces-transparency-anjali-bhardwaj-213312