Sunday, April 7, 2013

Forward march to revisit past fallacies!

Instead of taking a close look at its own policies that led to the recent public agitations, The government is now looking at ways to attack freedom of press, just for being the carrier of bad news.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on August 30 announced the setting up of a group that will specifically deal with regulating the media in order to make it more accountable. The decision was taken at a cabinet meeting, which saw some adamant pressure from members who were upset with the way the media covered the anti-corruption agitation of Anna Hazare. According to sources, there was also a strong belief among a majority of the PM’s colleagues that the entire movement was actually fuelled by the media. In the wake of these developments, the government is now looking to devise ways and means to address the issue by curtailing exaggerations in press reports. Some of the ministers have even been critical of the ‘anti-government’ slant in the coverage, and have been pressing for curbs both in the Cabinet meeting as well as in the newly-constituted Group of Ministers (GoM) on media and paid news. The composition and powers of the group are not clear yet. Interestingly, the government says it wants to put curbs on the media without curbing the freedom of the press.

The last time that India witnessed a regime of media censorship was in the 1970s when Indira Gandhi had imposed emergency rule in the country. The suspension of all civil and political rights soon followed and so did political censorship. In fact, this continues to be the only dictatorship that modern India has ever witnessed till date. To be fair, the recent move by the present government cannot be compared with the Emergency, but the agenda to control free speech looks alarmingly similar and, as experts put it, deplorable and regressive.

The Anna Hazare movement is not the first instance where the government failed to gauge public sentiment. Neither is this the first instance that the government has tried to curb the freedom of the press. In 2007, the government came out with a draft Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill, tagged as the country’s ‘most sweeping attempt to infringe on free speech’. Serious concerns were voiced on the belief that live telecast of the 26/11 Mumbai strikes had helped the Pakistani terrorists. The government had then proposed restrictions on live telecast of such emergency situations, permitting only “authorised feeds” to be telecast. The proposed law, which is still under consideration, is actually the result of a Supreme Court decision in 1995 when the court mediated a dispute over telecasting rights of a live cricket match. The court deemed India’s airwaves a scarce resource and “public property”, which should not be monopolised by the government or private broadcasters, but regulated for national interest. The Apex court recommended that the government create an independent statutory body to act as the custodian of airwaves. The proposed move saw some stiff opposition from media agencies who took up the matter with the PM. In their representation, the editors said the proposed measures to “gag the electronic media” had caused immense disquiet in the journalistic fraternity and among all those who believe in the right to freedom of expression.
 

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
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