The British government had, in the wake of
the News of the World phone-hacking
scandal, set up a committee, led by Justice Brian Leveson to enquire into the
‘culture, practice and ethics’ of the press, including the media’s relations
with politicians and the police. The panel’s 2,000-page report had slammed the media
for “sensationalism” and “recklessness”, and recommended a strong and
independent regulator. In March this year, political parties agreed to a deal
to set up such a mechanism through a royal charter.
Explaining the rationale for officially introducing the Leveson
report’s measures into India’s “political and parliamentary space”, an
anonymous source — not authorised to speak about the issue — told The
Hindu that India had inherited several democratic institutions from
the U.K.: “We share a culture of a free and vibrant press, and there is logic
in [seeking to understand] comparative and relevant international experience.”
The other reason, the source explained, was the report’s focus on
the relations between media and people in power, “particularly law-enforcement
agencies”.
“Even in India, we see that right after a blast, media outlets
begin blaming certain outfits based on [information from certain] sources. And
this sets the tone for the investigation. Cases of innocent men being acquitted
after years in prison are well-known.” The committee report, he said, could be
a useful way to discuss the “interplay of different forces in the public
domain, especially between the media and law-enforcement agencies”.
“What kind of source-based reportage should be allowed before a
charge sheet is filed?”
 |
| Ten evils donning today's Media groups |
There are numerous allegations of irresponsible
journalism. Most recently, the External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid
accused Aaj Tak news channel of
airing an inaccurate story about purported embezzlement of funds by an NGO
headed by himself and his wife. All these demonstrate, to different degrees,
the decline of journalistic ethics, the lack of transparency in the functioning
of Indian media, especially their financial dealings, and a poorly enforced
regime of defamation law.
There are the close personal connections
between journalists, politicians and corporations exposed by the Radia tapes,
conversations recorded by revenue authorities between corporate lobbyist Niira
Radia and a number of senior journalists and leading politicians, leaked to the
public.
- Siddharth Varadarajan, the Editor of The Hindu, have advocated more effective self-regulation.
- Others, such as Prannoy Roy, CEO of New Delhi Television, speaking recently in Oxford, support the idea of independent external regulation.
In a recent seminar the former Chief Election
Commissioner, SY Quraishi, revealed that the Election Commissioner had
identified 371 cases of paid news in the lead-up to the recent state elections
in Bihar, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry, the magnitude
being serious enough for him to recommend making paying for news and publishing
it a punishable offence.
 |
There simply is no widely respected, autonomous
and effective industry-wide self-regulatory body with the power to impose
sanctions on erring media and have its decisions complied with. In India’s
version of the ‘Richard Desmond problem’, India TV withdrew its membership of
the News Broadcasters Association (NBA), an industry-wide association, after
being fined by its dispute redressal authority. The Association was
helpless in backing up the authority’s decision with sanctions, thereby
severely delegitimising itself. The subsequent failure of the NBA and other
existing industry-wide associations to fashion themselves into efficacious
self-regulators, commanding compliance from their members, has meant that
self-regulation, while attractive in principle, has proved unworkable in
practice.
*****************************************************************
In early May, the Parliament’s Standing
Committee on Information Technology, in its report on “paid news”, indicted the
I&B Ministry for not doing anything “substantial” to check the “menace” and
recommended that a body be set up to look at media contents “in both print and
electronic media”. In April, the Delhi High Court told the government to put in
a “statutory regulatory body” for the electronic media. Press Council of India
Chairman Justice (retd.) Markandey Katju has demanded that the media be given
more teeth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a
study “Representing Citizens and Consumers in Media and Communication
Regulation” (published in the May 2007 issue of Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science) Sonia Livingstone and Peter Lunt
categorise the interests of the consumer and the citizen as separate from
each another.
- The consumer focus is on the “economic”, that of the citizen on the “cultural”;
- the consumer is concerned about the “networking”
and allied “services”, the citizen’s concern is
programming “content”.
- The consumer evokes the “individual”, the citizen the “community”.
They
elaborate this division in a further psycho-sociological checklist, which
describes inter alia
(i) the
interest of the consumer in terms of “wants”, that of the citizen in terms of
“needs”;
(ii)
the consumer as representing “private benefit” and the citizen, “public
benefit”;
(iii)
the consumer’s as being a “language of choice”, the citizen’s a “language of
rights”;
(iv)
the focus of or for the consumer tending to be “short term”, that of or for the
citizen, “long term”;
(v)
regulation on behalf of the consumer becoming an action “against a detriment”
and that on behalf of the citizen, one in the “public interest”;
(vi)
the consumer’s interest, in the market model of the media, as likely to
“rollback regulation”, whereas “continued regulation to correct market failure”
may be what is in the citizen’s interest.
and the
media fails to understand the needs of the citizens rather fulfills the needs
of the consumers ...!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coming to the Lessons which can be learned from the
Leveson's report !!
The broad
methodology adopted by Lord Leveson, as evidenced in the report, is
instructive. To begin with, he announced a set of criteria to arrive at a
regulatory framework and sought opinion on it from a cross section of the
public. The criteria were meant to ensure that the proposed regulation is
effective, credible and durable; that it will adhere to norms of fairness and
objectivity; is independent and enforced with transparency and that there is
compliance; has remedial or curative powers, and has funding to sustain it.
- It is not only the people who need protection against excesses of the press, journalists themselves are susceptible to pressure and need what he calls a “whistle blowing hotline” to function with integrity and true to their conscience.
- Leveson had called for independent self-regulation of the press. One can argue that this phrase is a contradiction in terms—if the press regulates itself then its regulator is not independent-but the judge's plan was clear enough: a regulator funded by the press but run by an independently appointed board with a lay majority and with no serving politicians or editors among its members. There was broad support for such a body, as well as acceptance within the industry that the existing Press Complaints Commission did not satisfy the Leveson test.
- Crucially, though, the Leveson Act would be no more than "statutory underpinning". The regulatory body would not be created by Parliament: it would be designed and established by the industry itself, would have to decide whether the regulator had met the required standards and would also have to keep the regulator under review and ensure that standards did not slip. Parliament's role would be limited to setting out the standards and establishing the recognition body.
- “It is,” he says, “essential that there should
be legislation to underpin the independent self-regulatory system and
facilitate its recognition in legal processes”, but hastens to add that
such legislation will not establish any body to regulate the press, nor
give parliament or government any right to prevent newspapers publishing
any material.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Moral of the Story
An appropriately structured regulator can
enforce a degree of accountability rendering ill practices less likely, it will
not be a magic wand that will rescue the Indian media from all its current
travails. That will necessarily be a long-drawn out exercise requiring new
ideas, multiple interventions and reforms of a kind not adequately contemplated
to date. Perusing the recommendations of the Leveson Report and assessing their
usefulness for India is the best starting point possible for such an exercise,
with real potential to inject new life into a currently deadlocked debate.
And then perhaps India should have its own version of a Leveson inquiry.
