Gagging the media in house
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by: Guest
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From quite some time now the government has been trying to scare the media by declaring its intention to bring a bill to regulate certain types of content in television broadly described as 'obscene' (largely in advertisements) and objectionable. Since the media in a democracy does not get scared easily, chances are that the information minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi will be denied the pleasure of piloting a gag bill in the monsoon session of parliament, which, like the previous sessions, may well be dominated by a non-stop display of BJP tantrums designed to derail proceedings. The opposition will do its act to stop the UPA government from inching towards gagging the media. But there is no need to rejoice at politicians' opposition because almost all of them, irrespective of their political hues, are upset with the advent of 'sting' operations. In fact, the government's keenness to introduce censorship by another name is linked to the expressed desire of all politicians to ban sting operations that are not in 'public interest'. The irony is that politicians are not willing to clearly define 'legitimate' sting ops that serve 'public interest'. Meanwhile, an interesting debate has begun in the print media about the pros and cons of the proposed law. Not surprisingly the more common view is against any move by the government that smacks of gagging the media by law. But the arguments are often enveloped in thinly disguised condemnations of the visual media's tendency to increasingly sensationalise and trivialise news and serious issues. A view expressed many times over whenever the question of restraining the media cropped up is that the best way to prevent indiscretions by the media is for it to exercise some kind of voluntary 'censorship', or whatever name one might give it. Yet, no preacher of this advice has made any effort to practice restraint voluntarily in his or her domain. That may be because nothing stirs in India until public outcry assumes serious proportions. What the media has to consider is that despite its tremendous growth, its influence and the credibility have taken a severe beating. It is not uncommon to hear the media being accused of something serious such as the recent case of a group of disabled persons in Varanasi consuming poison allegedly at the instigation of some TV journalists looking for a sensational story. After reading some of the views against the government's gag law plan, an impression is created that there are very few takers for the kind of freewheeling TV journalism that has become the norm on private channels, especially the Hindi news channels. The authors of these views have been less than fair in apportioning all the blame on the visual media when the influential and 'big' (English language) newspapers too have not hesitated to copy some of the maligned techniques of the visual media. When actor Sanjay Dutt was sentenced to six years' imprisonment the news channels virtually forgot about all other news so that they could devote full time to stories about the actor over the next few days. The coverage exceeded the generous visual spread of the recent wedding of two Bollywood stars, Abhishek Bachhan and Aishwarya Rai. But Delhi's two leading papers outdid the private TV channels, devoting pages after pages to the Sanjay Dutt story and not just on the day the sentence was announced. In the process the majority of readers acquired a useful insight into the life in a jail, complete with the jail menu and the duties the inmates are asked to perform, and influenced by the hype many readers thought that the actor's punishment was wrong. The Sanjay Dutt story led to downgrading of what most people would consider the more serious developments such as the havoc caused by floods that took lives in hundreds. Also pushed to less prominence is successful conclusion of a civilian nuclear treaty with the US that may be unacceptable to many but is certainly a turning point in the history of India-US relations. That Sanjay Dutt has a huge fan following and is a nice bloke (despite the sentence) is not in question. The point is when does the coverage of certain news stories look out of proportion? The newspapers as well as TV channels are expected to dwell more on events that constitute 'hard news' that interest a cross section of the readership/ viewers, instead of catering to the needs of just one section of the readers/viewers. Perhaps there is a saving grace about the print media when it has gone over the top on a story. It receives letters of protest from the readers and at least some papers do print them. Some form of disagreement with the paper's judgement is publicly acknowledged. In the visual media one does not know if there is any mechanism to show or air the dissenting views. One would probably point to some of the 'discussions' on TV channels where dissenting views are indeed expressed. That is some achievement because more often than not the anchors or the interviewers are so authoritarian that they keep brushing aside the dissenters with disdain. May be the private TV channels recognise that their stock as purveyors of 'hard news' has gone down and so many of them now offer more than a fair share of 'entertainment' in the form of humour shows. It is supplemented with 'heart-rending' or gruesome stories that are supposed to captivate the audience. In today's age of cut throat competition and the big fight for television ratings, the channels would not allow anyone to draw up for them the lines within which they can or should function. The danger here is the assumption that the silence of the reader or the viewer is a sign of approval. A silence arising out of dissent and anger can sometimes lead to an outburst. This is the kind of moment that the government could be waiting to execute its long-held plan for officially gagging the media-and this is precisely why the media needs to pay more serious attention to in-house efforts to 'gag' itself.
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