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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Boomtown Troubles by Ashok Malik

Boomtown Troubles by Ashok Malik

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published Published on Oct 18, 2011   modified Modified on Oct 18, 2011

IT IS one of the inspirational legends of Indian journalism that James Hickey, founder and editor of the Bengal Gazette — this country’s first newspaper, with its first edition going back to January 1780 — was a fearless seeker of the truth, taken to court and imprisoned by Warren Hastings, then governor-general.

Reality is a little different. Hickey’s paper was often a gossipy, yellow rag. It thought nothing of publishing scurrilous reports, writing colourful stories about Hastings’ wife and playing factional politics within the governor-general’s council. When a rival paper was promoted by Hastings’ friends, Hickey sought to guard his monopoly by attacking the business interests of the new paper’s financial backers.

Has anything changed? From start-up newspapers that claim established incumbents put pressure on distributors and advertisers to start-up news channels that wonder if cable operators and DTH providers associated with rival channels will carry them, the sharp practice of the Hickey era is just so contemporary. So is the curious mix of an incestuous and adversarial relationship between the press — or the news media as it is now known — and the government.

What does this mean for the only-forprofit industry — with the possible exception of politics, one might be tempted to add — that draws protection from provisions in the Constitution? Is the media performing its duty? Indeed, what is its duty or obligation to society and its readers and viewers? Is the fact that so much of public discourse and political process is driven by television images and almost tailored for prime-time appeal something to worry about, something to celebrate or merely something inevitable? Is the media a monster or a necessary evil? Does it need regulation and checks and what role, if any, must be government be allowed here?

These questions are not new. They have been growing in recent years — through the Niira Radia tapes episode, through the Anna Hazare hysteria (when news channels often seemed to breach the line between independent or even opinionated observers and Anna’s auxiliaries. It has reached a stage where the government — any government, in the Centre, in the states, from one party or the other alliance — fears the media more than it does the Opposition. The UPA government through its season of scandal, the BJP government in Gujarat through Modi’s decade in power, the CPM in the nasty build-up to the West Bengal election of 2011: the common enemy was always a media accused of misrepresenting facts.

The phenomenon worries politicians. When the Hazare fast began at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi in April, at least one BJP MP said, “Of course, we will support him because it will hurt the Congress, but it sets a dangerous precedent. It could be us if we come to power. The media can make a hero of anyone. And remember the media likes us less than it likes the Congress.” The Congress would nod vigorously, except it would insist the media hates it even more.

If this phenomenon worries politicians, it worries serious media practitioners even more. As Vinod Mehta, editor-in-chief of Outlook, says, “Transgressions of the media, in style and in content, are growing. The atmosphere of polemics and namecalling is distorting national debate. I’m not concerned by complaints from the governments. But even dedicated and assiduous watchers of news channels are complaining. This is our constituency.”

SO HOW does one remedy the situation and do so in a manner that does not impede press freedom and democracy, the default defence of over-the-top journalism? It can’t be the government, but what’s to stop it from trying? This past week, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting took a new policy for granting permission for uplinking and downlinking of channels to the Cabinet and got the necessary clearance.

Before the new rules could be notified, there was a furore. At a meeting with television editors on 11 October, I&B Minister Ambika Soni backtracked and announced the policy would be vetted by a committee of stakeholders, including representatives of the News Broadcasters’ Association (NBA; the collective of 21 major broadcasters that between them run 46 24/7 all-India news channels), the India Broadcasting Foundation (IBF; a grouping of 250, largely entertainment-based channels) and the Broadcast Editors Association (BEA).

The storm had blown over and the spectre of “content regulation” had been felled, but what was it all about in the first place? India has an astounding 745 television channels. Three hundred and sixty-six of them — one for each day in a leap year — are categorised as news and current affairs channels. Another 600 channels have applied for licences to commence operations. If this rate of growth continues, it is conceivable that by the end of the decade, India will have more television channels than the rest of the planet put together.

A whole bunch of channels are due for a licence renewal after their initial 10- year licence runs out. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India asked the ministry whether it was considering across-the-board norms for licence renewal. The ministry came up with at least two controversial proposals.

First, the net worth of an entity seeking to operate a non-news/entertainment channel was raised from Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 5 crore. For news channels, the figure was raised to Rs 20 crore from the existing Rs 3 crore, with a Rs 5 crore addition for every incremental news channel the broadcaster sought to run.

Second, renewal of licences for a further 10 years would be considered only if the channel had not violated the Programme and Advertisement Codes on five occasions or more. Clearly the target was news channels.

Funnily, the government could have claimed it was actually liberalising norms. As per the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, and the Cable Television Networks Rules, even one infringement of the Programme and Advertising Codes can result in a channel being taken off the air. Section 6 of the Rules lays down the Programme Code. It is vague and wideranging, prohibiting a programme that:

• Offends against good taste or decency
• Contains criticism of friendly countries
• Contains anything obscene, defamatory, deliberate, false and suggestive innuendos and half-truths
• Is likely to encourage or incite violence or contains anything against maintenance of law and order or which promote antinational attitudes
• Contains anything amounting to contempt of court • Criticises, maligns or slanders any individual in person or certain groups, segments of social, public and moral life of the country 
• Contains visuals or words that reflect a slandering, ironical and snobbish attitude in the portrayal of certain ethnic, linguistic and regional groups

Five violations of this decidedly subjective code, written into law by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting bureaucrats and interpreted by successor bureaucrats, could result in denial of licence renewal, or so the policy cleared by the Cabinet seemed to suggest. “The code,” says Anup Bhambani, lawyer for the IBF, “goes well beyond Article 19(2) of the Constitution, which places reasonable restrictions on Article 19(1)(a) — the right to freedom of speech and expression.”

At the 11 October meeting, Soni reportedly told the news channel editors that she was under pressure from colleagues in the government but suggested a route out. The five violations would be determined not by bureaucrats but by a self-regulatory mechanism. Rajdeep Sardesai, editor-inchief on CNN-IBN, was probably expecting this. As he said, “The government, and Mrs Soni in particular, has been encouraging of a self-regulatory mechanism. So this move had come as a surprise.”

DOES SELF-REGULATION work in practice? Mehta is cynical of how self-regulation is perceived. “Self-regulation is okay for the other guy,” he says, “not for yourself. Every editor talks about it but finds excuses when it comes to the publication or channel he edits.”

NBA has another view. Three years ago, the NBA set up the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA). The NBSA is an adjudicatory body headed by Justice (retd) JS Verma and has eminent persons like former foreign secretary Chokila Iyer, technocrat Kiran Karnik and academic Dipankar Gupta as members, besides editors from member channels who serve a term.

Especially after the public disquiet following the 26/11 terror attack coverage, the NBSA has begun to be taken seriously by its constituents, Sardesai says. For instance, the supernatural and ghost-reincarnation shows, so beloved of Hindi channels, are being eased out.

India TV Editor-in-Chief Rajat Sharma, whose channel walked out of the NBSA in 2009 after it was fined for apparently misrepresenting the views of a Pakistani strategic analyst but who was then persuaded to come back, is categorical: “The three years under Justice Verma have seen a sea change. Greater interaction between editors of channels has also helped. There is a willingness among broadcasters to aim to win public trust.”

That does sound less than believable but Sharma has an anecdote to back it up. When cricketer Mohammed Azharuddin’s teenaged son died following a motor accident, there was a rush of cameras outside his Hyderabad residence, asking visitors the usual “How do you feel?” question. “A relative of Azhar’s,” says Sharma, “asked our journalist to go easy.” An India TV editor contacted other channels and a unanimous decision was taken to give the family its moment of privacy.

Touching as this story is, it is the exception. In breaching the privacy of non-VIPs, those who aren’t politicians and cricketers and don’t have the editor’s number on speed dial, channels are decidedly gung-ho. The 2007 hoax sting operation by Live India TV led to a schoolteacher in Delhi being falsely accused of pushing her pupils into prostitution. The channel was banned for a month and a few journalists lost their jobs, but everything soon returned to normal.

THERE ARE other examples. Shashi Tharoor was a minister and Sunanda Pushkar the alleged recipient of undue sweat equity in the Kerala IPL mess, but did Pushkar’s parents genuinely deserve to have television crew barging into their residence. “What about the common man?” asks Mehta, “the person who knows nobody and has no means of redressal?” The fact that the NBSA has decided on 193 cases in the past three years will provide some hope to him, but only some.

Self-regulation sounds very nice but is only as strong as the NBA members want to make it. Its 46 members are the Big Boys of newscasting, accounting for 80 percent of news viewership. This has also meant that they have not been worried by the government’s proposal to raise the capital base for any new television channel.

Television is an expensive medium and takes much more than printing a handbill or a small newspaper. Yet can the government institutionalise and validate news television as a rich man’s sole preserve, as the Rs 20 crore criterion is doing? “It can be challenged in a court of law,” says a lawyer, “as an infringement of the right to freedom of expression.”

A channel owner argues that the base capital issue is only the thin end of the wedge. “Today,” he says, “setting up a channel and acquiring a composite licence for uplinking, downlinking and running a channel, is a tedious and time-consuming process. It requires the applicant to get clearances from five ministries — home, defence, finance, telecom and, of course, information and broadcasting. It even requires permission from something called WPC.” That abbreviation stands for Wireless Planning and Coordination, an agency under the Ministry of Communications.

A section of the NBA is planning to challenge this complicated process and demand a transparent and accountable mechanism, rather than one beholden to government subjectivity. A regulatory institution to oversee licensing as well as possible content breach is an obvious solution. “In the end,” says Sardesai, “we have to move to something like Ofcom in the United Kingdom.”

India’s only experience has been with a toothless Press Council (see box story) and an NBSA that can be snubbed by its members should they so choose. It is very different in other mature media markets. In his book Media Ethics: Truth, Fairness, and Objectivity (OUP is publishing a revised edition next month), journalist-educator Paranjoy Guha Thakurta talks about the 2004 Super Bowl game in America that led to the so-called ‘Nipplegate’ controversy.

The half-time entertainment event in that match featured Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake and had Timberlake tearing off Jackson’s shirt and exposing part of her breast. “The Federal Communications Commission,” says Thakurta, “imposed a fine of $550,000 on CBS. The key thing is, it required the channel to pay first and then appeal, say it was not at fault, it was inadvertent and so on. It had to pay first.”

Are Indian channels ready for such rigour?

THE EVOLUTION of the dowdy press to the coquettish media has exposed a hitherto unknown facet of India and Indians — an unabashed, almost brazen exhibitionism. Indians will do anything to appear on television — including admit to incest. This happened on Sach ka Saamna, a Star Plus show that was taken to court by the I&B ministry. The Delhi High Court delivered its judgment in September 2011 upholding the ministry’s warning for the channel against showing “vulgar and indecent” episodes in the future.

When this template is put to news channels, it creates a situation where no political event or initiative is taken in the absence of a media plan and having factored in television schedules and ‘slow news’ periods.

Sometimes, the slow news periods are artfully anticipated, as in the case of the Anna Hazare fast in early summer, which took place after the cricket world cup and before the IPL. Sometimes they happen by accident. In May 2009, the Indian media was gearing up for a month (or a summer) of hectic dealmaking after an expected indecisive election. However, the voters decided otherwise and the UPA won a handsome victory. With no story to do, the news channels (and some newspapers) invented a war with China.

In August-September 2009, Indian newspapers reported Chinese incursions in Ladakh. News channels soon picked this up as a sample of a new Chinese belligerence and a desire to “teach India a lesson”. Soon Indian television anchors and Chinese government spokespersons were declaring hostilities against each other, with the Indian government a confused spectator.

The Indian media’s China war was revealing of just how much of public discourse and transmission of popular ideas and prejudices is now driven by news networks and, to a lesser degree, publications. Tellingly, it can be argued that the Indian media today influences politics more than policy. Was it different an age ago?

Consider the real-life India-China war of 1962. Jingoistic newspaper articles pushed Jawaharlal Nehru into a forward policy his army was not prepared for, and led it to claim territory it was not in a position to defend. This is not the only reason for India’s humiliation in 1962 but it certainly played a role.

The jingoistic news channels of 2009 did not influence government policy, but did heighten the political atmosphere. Some in the Indian external policy establishment probably ended up finding the media useful. Those quarters of the Ministry of External Affairs that had always wanted to “hit back” at China, but needed a roundabout approach due to the wariness of the political leadership, came to consider the aggressive news channels as an unintended ally.

The China story was big, a showstopper almost. In everyday media life, there are a dozen such stories — planted or spun by some politician or party or government department — that are broadcast, even if to be contradicted the next day if not during the next bulletin.

Is such a media-driven agenda healthy? More to the point, is it inevitable? Can it be checked, and will that checking be quantitative or qualitative?

FOR A start, even the numbers are in dispute. Sharma discounts talk of 366 news channels with more to come. “The rules define even a general channel that has one 30-minute news or current affairs show in a day as a news channel. These are not all 24/7 channels,” he says. There is a point here. Take Hindi channels. India TV, Aaj Tak and Star News account for 60 percent of all viewership. If you add the Hindi channels of the NDTV, IBN and Zee networks, viewership climbs to 80 percent. The 15 odd other national Hindi channels fight for the crumbs.

Yet the consolidation picture is not marked by as much clarity elsewhere. In Andhra Pradesh, politicians own 13 Telugu news channels with three more waiting to be launched. In Tamil Nadu, even different wings of the DMK family seem to have their own channels. How do you stop this? If a paid-up capital stipulation is fundamentally unfair, then what will work?

There are no easy answers. “I’m certain no more than 5 percent of our news channels are genuine, professional operations,” he warns, “but once you get into the area of subjectivity in granting licences and give the power to exercise that subjectivity to the bureaucracy, you are going down a slippery path.”

The ballooning numbers don’t worry Sharma. In its own way, the media is doing its job he says. “It converts social anguish into a public event,” he stresses, “Mahatma Gandhi asked the media to understand people’s feelings and transmit them, to support valid emotions in society and to expose social ills. Isn’t the media doing all of these?” For him, the angularities of the moment are only transitory, a phase before the inevitable consolidation of news TV.

Despite Sharma’s optimism, the fact is media is putting off more people than it did before. The All India Radio FM news bulletin — with a straitlaced report on a flood in Manipur, a political crisis in Srinagar and a commemorative anniversary in Bundelkhand — is often a better mid-day round-up of India than the breathless, “breaking news” factories on the small screen.

What hurts people even more is the absence of alternatives. If the media is shrill, loud and only occasionally believable, then politicians and several other institutions are even less credible. If everything from the Lokpal Bill to Australia’s relationship with Indian students is discussed in a black-and-white, us-andthem, now-or-never manner, it also reflects the paucity of alternatives and complementary sources of intelligible and accessible public ideation.

Indeed, rather than shorten the line called media, the government — or the Indian State — needs to be thinking about drawing a longer line to offset it. As TEHELKA Editor Tarun Tejpal says, “We can’t and shouldn’t curb the media. But the State needs to incubate mechanisms for considered examination of issues, to help shape public discourse.” Without a network of foundations and public policy thought shops, India allows its media a free rein. America has its think-tanks; India makes do with 8-10 pm chat shows.

Such are the pleasures — and perils — of our media epoch.

Ashok Malik is Contributing Editor, Tehelka.
ashok@tehelka.com

Tehelka Magazine, Vol 8, Issue 42, 22 Oct 2011, http://tehelka.com/story_main50.asp?filename=Ne221011coverstory.asp

Tagged with: media



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