When A Journalist Questions A Minister In Assam

It started like any other day in the rhythm of newsmaking, a question tossed across a room, routine and necessary. But on June 27, 2025, in a Guwahati press conference, that simple act turned seismic. A reporter, performing his journalistic duty, dared to question Assam’s Housing and Urban Affairs Minister about alleged irregularities in a government dairy scheme. What followed was not an answer, but an insult, a stunning declaration that laid bare the fault lines within Assam’s media world.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has since issued an apology “on behalf of the government,” a gesture that brought some temporary balm. But the deeper wounds remain unhealed. This moment has revealed how structural inequality, class hierarchies, and power asymmetries define the everyday experiences of reporters in Assam, particularly those working in regional language media, district bureaus, stringers and freelance roles.
As a media studies teacher observing Northeast India's complex media terrain, this controversy is not just about one minister’s offensive choice of words. It is about the symbolic violence that defines the journalistic field in regional India. Here, I propose to look at this moment through the analytical lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of fields, where journalism is understood not as a neutral space of information exchange but as a battleground of competing power, capital, and legitimacy.

The Moment: A Slur at the Press Conference

On June 27, 2025, at a Guwahati press briefing, Assam Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Jayanta Malla Baruah ignited a firestorm. When a reporter from a local channel, widely understood to be Pratidin Time, asked about alleged irregularities in a dairy scheme and Gir-cow procurement, Baruah spat, “I will not speak to low-class people like you… I’ll respond to the owner.” The contempt was instantaneous, leading to widespread protests by journalists wearing black badges across the state.

The backlash was swift. Journalists’ associations across Assam issued condemnations. Street protests erupted in Guwahati and beyond. News anchors staged symbolic walkouts and editorial teams blacked out coverage of the minister. More importantly, reporters across the spectrum, young stringers, district reporters, city desk scribes shared how this wasn’t an isolated event but a familiar humiliation in a job where dignity often remains elusive. Their protest is not just about one insult, but about contesting their marginalisation in the field of power.

Beyond the Outrage: A Structural Reading

What lies beneath this outburst is a struggle for legitimacy within the Assamese media field. According to Pierre Bourdieu, the journalistic field is a subfield within the larger field of power. It operates with its forms of capital: symbolic capital (reputation, credibility), economic capital (funding, salaries, ownership), and cultural capital (professional education, fluency in dominant languages, access to sources).

Journalists in Assam, especially those working in local news channels or small publications, often lack these capital in comparison to their English-language metropolitan counterparts. They operate in resource-constrained environments, often with little or no job security, and face the dual burden of reporting under political pressure while also being undermined by owners who treat them as dispensable.

When a minister disregards a reporter’s question and insists on speaking only to the owner, he is laying bare the rules of the field: recognition flows upward, not downward. The journalist is rendered invisible not just as an individual, but as a bearer of questions, accountability, and democratic duty. In Bourdieu’s terms, this is a moment where the field’s illusion, its internal belief in shared legitimacy is shattered.

Local Journalists: The Invisible Backbone

Assam’s media landscape has grown rapidly in the last two decades, particularly with the rise of private regional news channels like Pratidin Time, News Live, and others. But with expansion has come precarity. Reporters are hired on contract, paid poorly, and often expected to double up as camerapersons, desk writers, and field producers. Local journalists are also the first to face reprisals when stories challenge the powerful, whether it is a corrupt panchayat member or a high-profile minister.

In this context, the minister’s remarks serve as a mirror. They reflect how class and status distinctions function not just in politics but within journalism itself. It is not uncommon to hear phrases like “small-time reporter” or “low-level scribe,” even from within the fraternity. Bourdieu reminds us that these distinctions are not merely descriptive, they are performative, helping to preserve existing power relations.

Journalism as a Field of Struggle

Pierre Bourdieu described journalism as a field of struggle, where different agents compete over the definition of what counts as legitimate journalism. On one end are journalists with access to dominant institutions (state, corporate, elite networks). On the other are reporters on the margins, often closer to the ground but far from editorial control.

In Assam, this divide is stark. Many local reporters come from non-metropolitan backgrounds, speak in regional dialects, and have little institutional protection. They face the double burden of political intimidation and professional neglect. Yet, it is they who keep the informational arteries open in rural and semi-urban Assam viz. reporting on floods, evictions, human rights, and corruption.

The minister’s comment is an attempt to redefine journalistic legitimacy, from being grounded in the act of reporting to being attached to ownership and influence. It is, in Bourdieu’s words, a struggle to impose the dominant doxa, the unspoken rules of the game.

The Apology, and the Way Forward

CM Himanta Biswa Sarma’s apology, though politically calculated is significant. It signals that the government is aware of the fallout of such public disdain. But apologies alone are not enough. What Assam needs is a larger recalibration of respect within its media field.

Journalists' unions and media educators must use this moment to push for structural safeguards: contracts for reporters, grievance redressal mechanisms, and regular dialogue between policymakers and journalists. There must also be introspection within media houses owners must treat their reporters not as expendable assets but as the core of journalistic labour.

A Personal Note: The Field We Inhabit

As someone teaching and researching media in the Northeast India, I see this episode as part of a deeper malaise. Media institutions often replicate the very hierarchies they claim to critique. Young journalism students of the region often tell me their dream is to “work in metro cities.” Why? Because they associate local journalism with drudgery, risk, and low pay.

But what if we could flip this script? What if we reclaimed the value of regional knowledge, of local fieldwork, of journalism done in dialects, as not lesser but essential? What if Assam’s reporters, armed not with elite capital but with courage and community, were seen as the true public intellectuals of our time?

Conclusion: Dignity is the News

The current controversy in Assam is about more than a slur. It is about who gets to ask questions, and who is expected to remain silent. In the end, the greatest irony is this: the minister’s words, meant to belittle, have elevated the status of those reporters who refuse to be cowed down.

To echo Bourdieu, journalism can only reclaim its autonomy when it resists both external domination (from politics and business) and internal complicity (within newsrooms). That resistance is already underway in Assam. And in that resistance, we find the real story.

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