Towards media accountability

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Leveson report on the culture, practices and ethics of the press in the United Kingdom provoked a discussion in India but with media professionals divided and the government indecisive there has been no progress towards ensuring media accountability.

The Indian media presents a complex picture. The print media has a regulatory mechanism that is ineffectual. The electronic media has a self-regulatory mechanism which is even more ineffectual. The provisions of the Information Technology Act put the new media at the mercy of the police.

The constitution is silent on freedom of the press but the state acknowledges it inheres in the freedom of speech and expression, which is guaranteed. In the early years of freedom, newspapers exercised excessive restraint under editors who had experience of war-time censorship and were alive to the grave internal situation caused by post-partition violence. 

The Press Council, set up in compliance with the recommendations of a commission in the 1950s, is headed by a retired Supreme Court judge and includes representatives of newspaper owners as well as journalists, Members of Parliament and eminent persons drawn from different fields. It has no power to punish the wrongdoer. All it can do is to ask the erring newspaper to publish its adverse finding.

During the emergency, when censorship was in force, the government scrapped the council but the next government revived it. The experience of that period brought home to the journalists and the public the importance of press freedom. Their combined opposition forced Rajiv Gandhi to abandon a move to bring in a law to regulate the press.

The Press Council can claim credit for drawing up a code of ethics but over the years it lost such moral authority as it possessed. It remained a mute witness when the Times of India group entered into “private treaty” relationships with corporate entities. It investigated the “paid news” phenomenon but could take no action against the erring newspapers.

Television channels did not exist when the Press Council came into existence and are outside its purview. Five years ago, as the public reacted angrily to a channel’s fake sting operation against a school, the government considered legislation to bring the electronic media within its ambit or set up a separate regulatory mechanism for it. Channel owners immediately announced a code of ethics and set up their own regulatory mechanism styled as News Broadcasting Standards Authority, headed by a retired chief justice of India. The NBSA has eight members, four drawn from within the electronic media and four from outside. 

There are a few hundred news channels in the country but only 40 run by companies owned by the association which set up NBSA come under its jurisdiction. In one of the few cases of successful intervention, NBSA imposed a fine of Rs100,000 on a channel holding it guilty of intruding into the privacy of individuals in a report on homosexuality in Hyderabad.

In a complaint to the police, Navin Jindal, a Congress MP and industrialist, recently alleged that the Zee TV network attempted to extort Rs1 billion from his companies over a five-year period by way of advertisement charges. The network counter-charged that Jindal had offered it advertisement contracts to stop airing adverse reports.The police arrested two senior editors of the network. At the time of writing, several weeks later, they are still in jail without bail. The police summoned the owner of the channel and his son for interrogation.

A secretly taped video released by Jindal clearly shows that the channel editors compromised their journalistic position by entering into negotiations for a long-term advertisement contract. At the same time the editors’ prolonged detention strengthens the network’s charge of political motivation.

The basic issue is one of the media’s accountability to the society it seeks to serve. While the law can step in to deal with criminal conduct, there is a vast area beyond the reach of the law where accepted professional values must be the determining factor. It is here that the regulatory mechanism must play its part.

The concept of press freedom demands the government’s exclusion from the process of regulation. Justice Markandeya Katju, the Chairman of the Press Council, advocates the creation of a statutorily backed professional body for mediapersons similar to those already in existence for doctors and advocates. It is a pity the media fights shy of this eminently practical solution. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, Devember 12, 2012..

 

Media under scrutiny

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Markandey Katju, Chairman of the Press Council of India, which looks into complaints against newspapers and news agencies, has raised a hornet’s nest by stating some home truths.

Under the law only a former Supreme Court judge can head the Press Council. Katju, who has a reputation for outspokenness, retired from the apex court in September, and took over as its chairman last month. The jurisdiction of the council, first established in 1966, does not extend to private television, which made its appearance only two decades ago. Channel bosses were infuriated by Justice Katju’s suggestion that the watchdog body must be turned into a Media Council and the electronic media brought under its ambit.

He made the suggestion in a letter to the Prime Minister in which he also called for amendment of the law to give the Press Council power to punish erring mediapersons and institutions. All it can do is to admonish and censure the wrongdoer.

At one time the Press Council used to ask newspapers to publish its findings against them prominently, and they complied. Lately they have flouted such directives. In the circumstances, the suggestion to enlarge the Council’s powers is quite justified.

Some time ago, alarmed by reports that the government was thinking of a regulatory authority for the electronic media, channel owners and news television bosses declared they would enforce self-regulation. They then established a body styled as the News Broadcasting Standards Authority, with JS Verma, a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, as chairman and another named Indian Broadcasting Federation with AP Shah, a former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, as chairman.

The NBSA, after looking into complaints against a channel which had aired a report about gays, held that it had invaded the privacy of individuals and imposed a fine of Rs 100,000. This is the only known instance of purposeful intervention by that body to enforce standards.

Justice Katju said in a series of interviews that he had a poor opinion of the media, that a majority of mediapersons were of low intellectual calibre and that they were working not in the interests of the people but in an anti-people manner. Those were indeed harsh words, and predictably there was a loud uproar.

News channels took up Justice Katju’s statements for discussion at prime time, and he came under a barrage of criticism along with channel bosses, the Indian Newspapers Society, an organisation of newspaper owners, and some journalists’ bodies also took up cudgels against him.

At the first meeting of the Press Council with Justice Katju in the chair, the INS representatives demanded an apology from him for his remarks against the media. When he refused, they walked out.

Unruffled, Justice Katju reiterated his views. He dismissed self-regulation as an oxymoron, and said, “Everybody is accountable to the people in a democracy, and so is the media.” If they did not want to come under the Press Council, would they like to be under the proposed Lokpal, he asked.

He said the media, instead of addressing the problems of 80 per cent of the people such as dire poverty, massive unemployment, skyrocketing prices, lack of medical care and educational facilities and barbaric social problems like honour killing, dowry death, caste oppression and religious bigotry, devoted 90 per cent of the coverage to entertainment such as lives of film stars, fashion parades, pop music, disco dance and cricket and superstitions like astrology.

Elaborating his point about the media’s anti-people attitude, he mentioned how whenever there was a bomb blast the channels started talking of an email or SMS from an organisation with a Muslim name owning responsibility for it. Any mischievous person can send an email or SMS, he pointed out. By playing up such messages the media demonised a whole community.

Justice Katju said the European media had played a positive role during the transition from feudalism to a modern society. India was now going through a similar transition and he wanted the Indian media to play its part in that process.

It is worth noting that those who have joined the chorus against Justice Katju were more or less silent when issues like paid news and the Radia tapes rocked the media. A Press Council inquiry committee had found that several newspapers had taken cash from political leaders for coverage at election time. The telephone conversations of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia secretly recorded by an official agency had revealed the nexus between politicians and mediapersons.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah, November 21, 2011.