Free foxes among free chickens?
The commercial media operate like hardcore businesses, but when it comes to regulation, they wish to be treated with kid gloves as they claim to serve the values of free speech. What should the moral authority of the state protect - the right of the citizen to ethical journalism or the right of the media to sell its soul?
Posted Friday, Dec 18 09:59:27, 2009 on The Hoot
One of the major recommendations of Akash Bharati, the comprehensive report that laid out the road map for the future of Indian broadcasting immediately after the Emergency, was to scrap the Broadcasting wing of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry. The report argued that such a wing is anomalous in a democracy where media must operate as autonomous institutions, autonomous both from the market and the state. The report of course, emphasised the importance of a Broadcasting Council to regulate and to redress grievances.
When one looks at the planned inertia of the I&B Ministry that surpasses the moral inertia of the media industry, one is compelled to think that no ministry would have been better than a ministry that chooses to abdicate all its crucial regulatory obligations.
What are the regulatory obligations?
One, ownership: From the days of the First Press Commission, the ownership of media has been a matter of debate. Several commissions and expert groups have raised the problem of money from other businesses financing media enterprises primarily to generate a favourable policy environment and to promote friendly political actors to serve this purpose. Today, with the phenomenal and haphazard expansion of the media industry, it is clear that a large part of the investment into media is not just from the real economy as in the earlier phase, but from dubious sources - speculative finance, real estate and other parts of the ‘parallel’ economy. There is also a strong enmeshing of political interests in this. When a newspaper is started or when a television channel is started, is it not the responsibility of the licensing authority to examine the sources of finance and the antecedents of the promoters?
The state is constantly juggling with the FDI figures, is it 20%, should it be 26%, or is it better if it is 100%? Perhaps it is time to define what the colour of this money is, in addition to the percentage or whether it is from internal or external sources (is it ok if the investment comes from Indian mafia and not from overseas?). Is this like a ‘Christie’s auction?’ (or a Swiss bank account) that the state chooses to accept known fronts acting on behalf of ‘unknown’ backers? The recent statements of the Minister for I&B promising greater scrutiny of applications for news channel licenses should have been policy rather than an afterthought. And then, what about those licensees who are already ruling the airwaves? Media licenses are given to dubious business/political interests who are already under a cloud.
Two, advertising: Advertising has always been seen as a legitimate source of revenue for media. News to advertisement ratio/ price-page schedule is a dead idea, maligned and killed by the media industry. Today, glossies, newspapers, some news channels and movie channels, all carry disproportionate number of advertisements and without adequate gap between spells. Shouldn’t there be specific rules to define the amount of advertising, kind of advertising and the manner in which it is shown?
In the entertainment sector, channels routinely show paid promotional programming for building hype about some films, often by way of discussion programmes on the issues in a film with the stars from the films participating. The half an hour slots that promote hotels, stores and other commercial establishments that are obviously sponsored by the owners are shown without clarifying that the programming is paid for. The problem in such cases is, the viewer does not know that the praise heaped on the films or establishments is not neutral/fair judgement of the channel. Shouldn’t there be mandatory disclaimer next to the station logo that the programme is paid for?
Today, the arena for product and corporate promotion is not confined to advertising space alone, but has infiltrated the news columns. The latest manifestation of this phenomenon is the rampant virus of ?paid news’ during elections. But the malaise is so wide spread that news gathering in normal times over the last several years is also being done for some monetary or other consideration and rarely ever on the merit of the event or issue. This is widely known and managed by those who seek publicity. Manufactured celebrities and dubious talent abound on the best channels and newspapers. A politician’s mediocre poetry here, a pathetic designer line from a celebrity there, is all part of the fare. There is a conspiracy of silence about this as well, as it was about ‘paid news’. The Unions of Journalists are helpless in dealing with this as the culprits are from among their own ranks. Should there be some form of registration of practitioners by an independent, professional Media Council (like the Bar Council or the Medical Council) with the threat of deregistration for unethical practices?
As far as the pay channels are concerned, two other important issues need to be debated:
1. Some paid entertainment channels earn subscription revenues and go on to advertise on the channels far in excess of the 12 minutes per hour limit (an unwritten rule followed by channels in general). The movie watching experience of the viewer is of no particular concern to the channels. The viewer is paying directly (through subscription) and indirectly (by watching ads) for the same content and is forced to accept poor quality viewing experience to accommodate the channels’ desire to make more money. Any one who has attempted to watch a two and a half hour feature film on TV will vouch for this. It would take nothing less than four hours or more to watch.
The Television Without Frontiers Directive adopted by EEC and the UK limit advertising to 20% or (12 minutes) in any clock hour. The Directive also defines the number and nature of breaks in programmes: a) in films, news and current affairs programmes, and documentaries breaks should be limited to one for every period of 30 minutes; b) and children’s programmes, one break is allowed only in a programme of more than 30 minutes duration. The TWF states that ?in order that the interests of the consumers and TV viewers are fully protected, it is essential for television advertising to be subject to a certain number of minimum rules and standards?? Since 1950s UK also has the system of pre-viewing and approving all advertising shown on broadcast television. No such worldview seems to prevail in India.
2. The channels promote magic remedies like lucky stones and astrological solutions that clearly violate the Cable Act and also the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act. Some of these ads run close to five minutes at a time and are being routinely shown on television channels.
‘In Hamdard Dawakhana v. Union of India the Supreme Court was faced with the question as to whether the Drug and Magic Remedies Act, which put restrictions on the advertisements of drugs in certain cases and prohibited advertisements of drugs having magic qualities for curing diseases, was valid as it curbed the freedom of speech and expression of a person by imposing restrictions on advertisements. The Supreme Court held that, an advertisement is no doubt a form of speech and expression but every advertisement is not a matter dealing with the expression of ideas and hence advertisement of a commercial nature cannot fall within the concept of Article 19(1)(a)’.
(cited from http://www.legalserviceindia.com/articles/media.htm)
The major paradox of this game of course is, there is no content code in place for the channels (which are threatening to self-regulate), while the Cable Act has all the necessary clauses about superstitious content and promotion of magic remedies. Are the channels free to air objectionable material, but it’s the cable guy who gets the stick for showing it (of course, right now it is one big unregulated delinquency fest for both the carriers and the channels)?
The Ministry of I&B has made specific efforts to implement the Cable Act by asking the state governments to constitute state and district level monitoring committees. It is not clear whether such committees are constituted, how often they meet and what transpires at the meetings. The Information wings are also required to give wide publicity to the existence of the committees to get feedback from the public. A crucial requirement however is left out - the need to conduct meetings regularly, to put the complaints received and detailed minutes of the meetings on the I&B Ministry’s web site.
Three, news content: During political crises, such as the Andhra/ Telangana protests, the electronic media loop the most disturbing bits of footage and repeat them several hundred times in the span of a single day, often without masking the ‘LIVE’ legend on the corner of the screen. Some of the most provocative statements from both sides of the argument are taken and run repeatedly. In the context of the lumpenised, criminalised politics of Andhra Pradesh, this is completely irresponsible as the lower level activists of all parties are on the streets to provoke and drive passions up rather than to engage in rational debate. As part of content regulation, this must be stopped. If the channels are short of fresh footage, it should be their problem to make the news interesting by other means and not by repeating a ‘two second’ act into a 24 hour event. The frenetic unthinking verbal onslaught of ‘live reports’ by untrained and combative reporters speeds up the befuddlement. ‘Live’ reports sound like the running commentary at the Deccan Derby without the language skills or the sense of purpose! Channels must also be prohibited from packaging news footage with music and sentimental songs and repeating the footage ad nauseum. Violation of the rules must be penalised with fines.
There are some regional channels which have specialised in lighting fires of conflict in league with the political vested interests, and then once the events take on a life of their own on the street, cash-in on it further. Some media houses no longer just report news. They make it happen, much of it by speculating about future actions (predicting violence; falsely attributing deaths to causes/events; anticipating and goading suicides).
The case in point is the much-publicised event of K Chandrasekhar Rao visiting TV9 to donate for their flood relief work. KCR was in political wilderness after the Lok Sabha elections. After his public donation, TV9 took the opportunity of putting him live on air (three anchors took turns) to hold forth on a range of issues from his personal habits to national politics. This coup on one channel was followed by other channels, each giving KCR the opportunity to answer phone-in queries and clarify his stand on matters public and private. The channels began giving extensive coverage to his proposed fast unto death and the rest, as they say, is history. Should the media houses be allowed to raise funds for relief? Not just TV9 but other channels and newspapers also did the same. What is the accountability and repercussions of this, and primarily is it the role of the media houses?
According to TV9’s own mission statement:
The news is a very powerful source of communication and during times of need it is necessary that the channel be a source of crucial information for those in need. Therefore, our disaster coverage will be designed to help people in distress, and all criticism and negative commentary will be withheld until after the incident has been sufficiently resolved.
Every word of the mission was violated during recent coverage of floods in Andhra Pradesh.
Electronic media today appear to be the ‘single biggest threat’ to the internal security of the country (to borrow a phrase from the PM) and its democratic traditions, by whipping up passions around issues that require sensitive handling. After 26/11 one would have thought the state would have gotten its act together and come up with an independent media regulator to take charge of the media industry and bring it back on track. That was reason enough.
The commercial media operate and behave like hardcore businesses, but when it comes to regulation, they wish to be treated with kid gloves as they claim to serve the values of free speech. The legendary Mexican peasant leader Emiliano Zapata described free market as ‘free foxes among free chickens.’ If those with economic muscle buy up advertising and news space for their own promotion and deliberately falsify the public discourse with media as willing vehicles profiteering from this process, does the media industry still believe it has the right to seek special privileges under the freedom of speech clause? More importantly, what should the moral authority of the state protect - the citizen’s right to ethical journalism or the media’s right to sell its soul?
The recent ‘will they, won’t they?’ saga of content regulation by I&B Ministry and the nervous response to the need for an independent regulator for broadcast industry that has teeth (unlike the Press Council of India) is a telling example of the state’s abdication of its moral responsibility to enforce a cleaner media environment. If you want to protect a modicum of the freedom of the chickens to a safe existence, you will need to restrain some freedoms of the foxes, especially since we are not in a jungle but claim to be a part of a ‘civilized democracy’.
