Media Matters
Rules and codes
SEVANTI NINAN
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Between government overkill and industry self indulgence, we don’t have the kind of media regulation that a civil society needs.
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Photo: PTI
What constitutes news? A TV grab of Monica Bedi talking to newspersons.
Because public discourse reflects some concern about what our TV channels do, the Government is attempting once again to regulate private sector broadcasting. (The first effort was introduced in Parliament 10 years ago, and was promptly deferred to a
select committee. Then the government fell.) In response to the latest version of the Broadcasting Services Regulatory Authority Bill (based on 17 or 18 previous drafts) there is once again a predictable outcry. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting should not be surprised because it tends to score a self goal. It has put forward two documents, one, a draft legislation to create a regulator, two, a content code that attempts to introduce self regulation in television programming. The first document makes one suspect that there is a saboteur within the ministry. It is designed to provoke outright rejection in a country where attempts to impose government control over the media inevitably come to grief.
Terms of the Bill
The Regulatory Authority, as envisaged, introduces licensing for all TV and radio channels and provides for their revocation on certain grounds. One of these is if they do not follow directives which the government has the power to issue under this Bill. The regulator will be allegedly autonomous but it is not clear what powers it will have. The Bill gives the Central Government powers under an itemised list of 14 functions which pretty much cover what a regulator should be doing. That includes terms and conditions of licenses, power to prescribe licence fees, policy and certification guidelines, and so on. It lays down parameters of cross media restrictions (more on that in another column) and provides for a public service broadcasting council, but, guess what, it is the government which decide “from time to time” what obligations public service broadcasters should follow.
We are supposed to be this great talented nation, all set to become a world power. Our government cannot find in it a group of individuals drawn from civil society whom it can trust to come up with sensible regulatory mechanisms for the broadcast media?
The Content Code is exploring new ground in the broadcasting sector by proposing self regulation. It suggests each channel appoint a Content Auditor who checks out what is broadcast, prescribes certification categories for them, ensures adherence to rules for the certification category, and takes complaints from the public. There is lot of mirth over the guidelines that the government has come up with for deciding what is acceptable with regard to portrayal of sex and obscenity, crime and violence, libel and defamation, and horror and occult.
The auditors have to decide on the channels’ behalf if programmes are compliant; he may take up the matter with the chief editor, and he may win or lose an argument before something is broadcast. Once a year he has to report to government on all the instances in which he was overruled. Industry bodies are expected to set up Consumer Complaint Committees, receive complaints and decide on them. Time limits have been set for broadcasters to respond, and make redress.
Is India ready for self regulation? Not if you look at the way we behave on our roads. We drive on the wrong side of the road to avoid U-turns and treat red lights as challenges to be conquered. And we are queue resistant at public counters. But a country’s media is run by its intellectual elite, at least in theory, and should we not expect them to make a beginning?
Star News, Aaj Tak, Headlines Today, IBN 7 and Zee News are not owned by fly by night operators but by India’s leading media houses. They have opted for tabloid television. The problem with TV news as purveyed today, as Vir Sanghvi sensibly pointed out last weekend, is that what they purvey is not news but mass entertainment, the more lurid the better.
Predictable response
In response to the Bill and Code, the head honchos of these media houses are up in arms, including the CEO of Aaj Tak. When that group was launching a mens’ health magazine, Headlines Today would run news bulletins dominated by the findings of surveys carried in the magazine regardless of what the day’s more important news might be. More recently, Aaj Tak allegedly showed nudity which made some of its editorial staff blanch and complain privately to television critics. A fortnight ago, Monica Bedi was bigger news for most Hindi news channels and Headlines Today than stories on Haneef and the Memons.
To what extent is the market going to redefine what constitutes the day’s news? This question has to be answered by the broadcasters themselves. The government should ask them to come up with a set of broadcasting codes within a time limit, and accept them so that a beginning can be made. Then let the Consumer Complaints Committees be put in place, and a body of jurisdiction built up over what is acceptable and what is not. Between government overkill and industry self indulgence, India goes without the sort of regulation which several countries have put in place because civil society needs it.
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