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Media doesn't need Katju's New Order
Nov 25, 2011 - Vivek Sengupta |
Age Correspondent
Justice Katju, the new Press Council chairman, continues to rub
journalists the wrong way. Within weeks of taking over last month, he
has managed to get the backs up of almost the entire media fraternity.
He has made sweeping generalisations denouncing the media, sought to
expand the purview of the Press Council from just the print media to
include news television and demanded draconian powers for the Press
Council that would enable it to wield the "danda" and strike fear in
the hearts of journalists.
Not the best way to open innings for the head of a body which purports
not only to serve as a watchdog of the press but also to preserve the
freedom of the press and maintain and improve standards.
Justice Katju's complaints about the press have found widespread
resonance. Not just among media consumers but also many journalists.
It is acknowledged that there is much that is exceptionable with the
manner in which journalism is being practised in India today. But it
is also felt that he misses the big picture, betrays lack of knowledge
about how the media works and makes the mistake of regarding the media
as a homogenous entity.
But there is something more disturbing about his views. He appears to
belong to a school of thought championed by the Indian government in
the 1970s and the 80s. Justice Katju says, "It is the duty of all
patriotic people, including the media, to help our society" by
focusing on issues of poverty, economic backwardness, feudalism and
social backwardness. This call to duty brings to mind the
Soviet-inspired theories propounded by the champions of a New World
Information and Communication Order some three decades ago. News is a
social good and must serve a social purpose, they said, not a
commodity in the competitive marketplace. Providing information is a
social function; it should not be a business transaction. There was an
insistence that the press purvey "development news". Shedding its
adversary role, the press must make common cause with the government
in the supreme task of nation-building, it was asserted.
A "committed" press would obviously be under the thumb of the
government. What if Justice Katju gets his "danda" and uses it to
nudge the press towards such a subservient role? Far from taking India
forward, he appears inclined to take the country back in time.
It is surprising Justice Katju does not name the rise of paid news as
a major challenge. If he can direct his energies constructively to
help contain this threat by re-establishing the clear line of division
between paid content and editorial matter, he will have done the
country a signal service.
The other area where he could contribute is persuading editors to pay
attention to the decline in standards. The way to do it is to not to
describe the entire press corps as lacking in education, as he has
done. A surer bet would be to urge the media to invest more in hiring
better quality staff and, thereafter, in training them.
Justice Katju's admonitions would have gone down better with the media
if he had also acknowledged its tremendous contribution to the growth
of democratic society in India. It is the press which is bringing to
light all that is wrong with governance in the country. It is not
difficult to guess how society would have erupted had it not been for
the pressure cooker effect of the press.
On the other hand, the media, news TV in particular, must ponder why
the learned judge has found many takers for his views. The hysterical
tone of some channels and their readiness to be judge, jury and
prosecutor, giving short shrift to needs of balance and accuracy, have
not gone down well with viewers. News broadcasters would do well to
see this as an opportunity to put in place, at the level of individual
channels, a mechanism to have an internal ombudsman, a viewers'
editor, of the sort that the Hindu newspaper has, to address concerns
of accuracy and balance in as close to real time as possible.
Justice Katju would have carried more conviction if he had not treated
the media as a homogenous monolith, discounting its tremendous
variety. It is this variety that provides choice to the consumer and
allows for balance.
He may have issues with the quality of news coverage. He must realise
that this has a lot to do with the economics of newsgathering. More
importantly, such is the variety of media outlets in the country that
no real issue or significant development goes unreported. Seeking
homogeneity in the press or threatening to use strong-arm methods is
not the answer to challenges of coverage. Both will impose curbs on
the freedom of the press. Such curbs are unacceptable. None other than
Mahatma Gandhi made that clear: "The press is a great power, but … an
uncontrolled pen serves but to destroy. If the control is from
without, it proves more poisonous than want of control. It can be
profitable only when exercised from within. If this line of reasoning
is correct, how many of the journals in the world would withstand the
test? But who would stop those that are useless? And who should be the
judge? The useful and useless must like good and evil generally go
together and man must make the choice."
So, the Mahatma abhorred control from without and lauded choice.
Justice Katju appears not to like choice and he seeks to regulate from
without.
"Self-regulation is no regulation," he has told TV news broadcasters
and asked them whether they were willing to come under the Lokpal, if
not under the Press Council! The Lokpal! Could he be serious?
Vivek Sengupta, public affairs analyst, is founder and chief executive
of the consulting firm Moving Finger Communications
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