MEDIA MATTERS
Tackling excesses
SEVANTI NINAN
|
Despite the new amendments being proposed to the existing Cable TV Network Rules, the only effective censor is the viewer.
|
Now that we are all being wise after the event, the Government of India decided that it has to do something about the way TV channels ran amuck, and a cabinet note has been duly prepared, listing 19 new amendments in the Cable TV Networks Rules. These apparently address “various community and security concerns, remove ambiguities and empower the Government to exercise better regulatory control”. Translation: use the Mumbai case to bring in a sledgehammer to swat those tiresome flies. While we are telling them how to do their terrorism coverage, throw in clauses that will tackle all their other shameless excesses.
What I love about the Government of India is that it never gives up. And never learns. No matter which ministry does the drafting, restraint is an alien notion. It wields a hammer, there is a outcry, and then because we are a noisy democracy with a noisier free press, it backs down. So here is the picture: since going overboard in whatever we do is in our DNA, a heavy-handed government is ranged against a unrestrained fourth estate for the umpteenth time.
New regulations
The Indian Express tells us what is in this cabinet note. The next time there is a live conflict situation, be it war or a terror attack, there will be ‘delayed carriage of live feed’. How delayed and who will decide? Well that will be left to the discretion of a notified authorised officer (district magistrate, sub-divisional magistrate or commissioner of police).
While a designated “authorised officer” will clear all feeds of live war or terror operation coverage, live phone-in calls, operational details, “unnecessary repeat footage” and “unauthenticated information” related to investigations will not be permitted to be carried by cable services. The odd one out here is “unnecessary repeat footage”. Who will decide what is unnecessary?
We are talking of 60,000 or more cable operators across the country. How effectively have we policed them so far? The cable law has been in force since 1995 (amended in 2000) and already contains clauses which disallow many of the excesses we see daily on television. In India freedom of press comes by default. The designated censors at numerous local levels already have their hands full with more mundane matters of local governance and are unlikely to be able to implement more amendments to the Cable Act.
Clause 13 of the existing act empowers the Central Government to issue an order to regulate or prohibit the transmission or re-transmission of any programme that is not in conformity with the existing programme code. We can safely assume that this code did not permit any of the excesses we saw during the siege coverage. So during a 60-hour period the government could have issued orders to stop the coverage if it so chose. But it never did get its act together to either issue an advisory that channels would have had to comply with, or to cordon off areas it did not wish filmed, or to conduct briefings and insist that the facts reported be confined to these.
Ungovernable elements
One part of the picture is we already have an over-regulated but under-implemented framework. The other is that the media establishment on the TV side comprises ungovernable elements. You have an Oxford-educated anchor shamelessly raising the pitch because it gets his channel higher ratings when he does that. You have a home grown Shri Ram College of Commerce-educated TV anchor-turned channel owner creating a whole genre of bizarre news for the same reason — it gets his channel higher ratings. Both have one thing in common — call them to a discussion fora to discuss these things and they will beg off. Their viewers approve of them, why should they suffer tiresome civil society advocates or TV critics who have to live off their columns?
In other words they have no illusions about what they are doing, and why they are doing it. Because they can get away with it.
In its effort to cramp their style the Cabinet note has decided to get specific: it proposes that the permission for carrying any footage of a narco-analysis or polygraph test or judicial confession will have to be sought via a court order. It proposes according to the Indian Express “a slew of amendments aimed at curbing TV channels showing explicit images of sexual violence against women and children, exposing the identity of such victims, showing emotional scenes of living victims and relatives of deceased victims of crime, war and disaster, depicting extended images of blood or gore, and showing material that glorifies superstition and occultism.” Check out the programme code (http://mib.nic.in/informationb/media/actsrules/1995.htm), every one of these is covered already.
Last week I caught Arnab Goswami on a promo thundering about whether there should be a death penalty for fraudsters like Satyam’s Ramalinga Raju. Where is the programme code that will deter playing to the gallery?
The only effective censor in this country is the viewing public. When they tune out all the shrieking banshees on television will fall in line. Can the government organise that? If it cannot, here is a humble suggestion to the powers that be: stick to figuring out how effectively you can react in any emergency. And how well you can implement the law that already exists.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
