Firstpost, ever since its inception in 2011, has steadily built up a reputation of being one of the most popular online sources in India of news and analysis across genres. On January 8, 2013 it carried an article headlined “Watch your tweets: Jail for Twitter abuse is now real” written by Firstpost’s Senior Editor, Anant Rangaswami.

Why was this article of interest to us at Newslaundry? Because we are running a campaign called Internet Inqalab, which hopes to highlight the inanities and misuse of Sec 66A and Sec 77 of the IT Act which has led to the arrest of a number of people on the flimsiest of charges. And since my editors make for great troll-bait, they’ve had their fair share of threats on Twitter as well, including abuses in various articles they’ve written. Which is just as well going by their insufferable articles (especially their AAP eulogies). There is also the context of Kavitha Krishnan being threatened with rape during a Rediff.com chat.

So what was this Twitter abuse which you could be jailed for? The article was purportedly on the imminent arrest of two Britons for subjecting a high profile feminist to online abuse on Twitter. Firstpost was one of the few Indian media outlets to carry this report. The article, though, didn’t mention the particulars of the convictions and the context of the case until as late as the sixth paragraph. What we got instead in the first six paragraphs and in 249 words of the 499-word long story was a description of the “particularly harrowing days” CNN-IBN Editor-in-Chief Rajdeep Sardesai has had to endure on Twitter.

To make his point (and apparently also Rajdeep’s pain at being trolled) clearer, Rangaswami went on to quote a few tweets from Rajdeep’s Twitter timeline. For example: “I’ve had it with you awful people. You are intolerable and I don’t have to tolerate your abuse”.

Since we didn’t get the details of the actual arrests from this report, here they are. As reported in The Guardian, John Nimmo, 25, from South Shields, and Isabella Sorley, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, pleaded guilty on Tuesday, January 7, 2014 at the Westminster magistrate court to abusing feminist activist Criado-Perez. The abusive tweets were in response to an online campaign started by Criado-Perz in protest of the Bank of England’s decision to replace social reformer Elizabeth Fry on £5 notes with Sir Winston Churchill, leaving no female figure on banknotes.

While the tweets by Nimmo and Sorley were undoubtedly offensive in content and tone, the article’s liberal references to Rajdeep Sardesai – and a host of other celebrities – being “distraught” with trolls on Twitter, diluted the gravitas of the matter. In fact, it is almost bizarre that a progressive online media outlet like Firstpost should even remotely suggest any form of gag in the social media. It even refers to the convictions as “good news for those who have been reduced to helplessness on Twitter”.

In a telephonic conversation, Rangaswami explained to me that he is of the opinion that the same set of rules should apply in the online space as the real world. At a time when India as a nation is still grappling with the legal nuances that govern the online space, his stand seems perfectly legitimate. Yet, the article with multiple references of celebrities having to deal with online trolling seems more like a discourse on the propriety of behaviour on Twitter – one that dictates the grammar of the relationship between a celebrity and his or her critics. It refuses to acknowledge that the internet is a more interactive – compared to both the traditional print and broadcast models – platform and trolls are a part of the entire online experience.

Rangaswami’s article ends with another reference to Rajdeep where he prophetically predicts, “Rajdeep Sardesai and other victims might begin to feel it is safe enough to stay on Twitter” because of the convictions.  An ominous sentence which sounds like a veiled threat to anyone who’s ever said anything against Rajdeep. As an aside, we hear Kapil Sibal will be releasing his latest haiku in praise of Rajdeep and Firstpost’s support of jailing the Twitterati. It’s called “Editor’s Vote (In 140 Characters)”.