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No noose is good noose

The debate on the role of the media and the need for regulation is specious, dangerous, self-defeating and anachronistic in a mature democracy in 2011.

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Can one be so daft as to find something in common between the new Press Council chairman, Markandey Katju, and the Haryana strongman of yore, Bansi Lal? One a forthright judge, whom Fali Nariman invoked Shakespeare to praise, the other a take-no-prisoners” tyrant who completed the unholy trinity of the Emergency: remember the slogan, Emergency key teen dalal, Shukla, Sanjay, Bansi Lal. One a brahmin of brahmins, a Kashmiri from very liberal and genteel old Allahabad, the other a rough-and-tough Haryanavi Jat who founded a dynasty of sorts in his own political style and culture. But if you were my age and heard Bansi Lal tell you what was wrong with us journalists and how it was damaging India, you would understand why I draw parallels now.

As a journalism student in 1975, I watched Bansi Lal address the Independence Day rally at Rohtak, the heart of Jatland, where he explained why press censorship had been imposed. Of course Indiraji believed in press freedom. But press people should know that freedom does not mean licence (khuli chhutti), they must confine their views to editorials and not sully news stories with them, he said. And then he dropped all pretences, even of being the dean of the Haryana School of Journalism. What is the value of these newspapers, ” he asked, after 8 in the morning, one rupee a kilo? And what use are they at that price? Only that when you buy pakodas or chaat, the shopkeeper wraps them in a scrap of raddi… Never do it again, ” he exhorted the crowd, because these newspapers are so full of poison, you may just die.”

Comparisons are cruelly unfair and this one probably even more so. But I do not believe we journalists have been so forcefully attacked by anybody in the establishment ever since the Emergency, except now by the most venerable Justice Katju. There is also one big difference, and regrettably so for us journalists: during the Emergency all political abuse and excess brought forth wide popular anger with the establishment, and support and sympathy for the media. The opposite seems to be happening right now. Justice Katju called me last Friday to suggest that this paper hold a nationwide opinion poll on whether people think he is right in his criticism of the media. If they think I am wrong I will apologise, otherwise TV journalists who are abusing me for my remarks should say sorry to me, and mend their ways, ” he said, and underlined that the SMS poll running on one channel’s ticker while he was holding forth on it had given him a 78 per cent heads-up. I got away by suggesting that opinion polls are conducted by TV channels, so why doesn’t he ask one of them instead. But you know what my suggestion would be, duck this for now. Because such a poll will be risky, given the popular mood.


Also read: Cyril Almeida, Pakistan’s World Press Freedom Hero who exposed its military-terror nexus


Press freedoms were neither specifically written in our Constitution, nor in any clear laws. Freedom of speech for all citizens (Article 19 of the Constitution) is a gift from the founding fathers, but the notion of a totally free press is rooted in the social contract that emerged from the Emergency  when the people of India, having tasted censorship, declared they would never allow anybody to steal that freedom from their journalists. It has subsequently been nourished and irrigated by a remarkably libertarian and hugely respected judiciary. So, if today that holy social contract is fraying, and a liberal former judge of the Supreme Court is probing those fractures with a knife, and getting popular applause, it is time for soul-searching.

As one of the senior citizens of the media, I had tried raising the flag on these disturbing developments in an article titled ‘The Noose Media’ (IE, April 3, 2010). I had said that never before in my life had I seen journalists lampooned and even abhorred in popular culture as half-wit gasbags, insensitive, dumb, even corrupt reprobates. And this was before Peepli Live and much before the Munnabhai ring-tone of Niira Radia’s phone had become such a rude wake-up call for us. We continue to live in denial if we think we have redeemed ourselves fully by our unquestioning rallying of the Anna Hazare movement or the anti-corruption campaign. In fact, every time we boast about this in public, we only re-affirm the one attribute the people of India detest the most, arrogance of power or self-congratulatory hubris.

All this has made India the only democracy in the world where the role of the media in society and regulation are even being debated. This, when the rest of the world is celebrating the Arab Spring and WikiLeaks. We have a judge taunting us, to wide applause, to submit to regulation and if not, face the danda (though only in about 5 per cent cases, he says mercifully), and the government setting up a GOM on the media on the one hand, and suggesting self-regulation on the other. We journalists are batting on a very sticky wicket now, and frankly we are the ones who left it exposed to the nastiest elements.

While the current attacks are confined to news TV, nobody should be so smugly delusional as to see this as an issue of one medium alone. We at The Indian Express, which was in the forefront of two big battles for press freedom, during the Emergency and when Bofors-struck Rajiv Gandhi tried to bring in his anti-defamation law, believe that the idea of press freedom can be neither nuanced nor segmentised. So the same freedoms that the Constitution, our great post-Emergency social contract and the many Supreme Court judgments bestow upon us must also be available to all other media: whether TV, radio, web, or someone who runs an ekla-chalo blog. Any effort to curtail or even regulate” these by anybody must be resisted, even by fasting at Jantar Mantar or marching in protest on Rajpath. This debate on the role” of the media and the need” for regulation is specious, dangerous, self-defeating and anachronistic in a mature democracy in 2011.

That is why it is so distressing to see the many captains of news TV themselves pleading for regulation and thereby walking into a trap of their own setting. What is worse, they, in this panic, could also end up dragging the other media with them. Maybe, some are driven by other commercial considerations, or the need to keep going back to the government for this clearance or that. More likely, they are responding to the larger public criticism and the Peepli Live syndrome. But this self-flagellation is dangerous and drags us all on a slippery slope.

During the Emergency it was said that when asked to bend, most Indian journalists chose to crawl. Today there is no Emergency, no Indira Gandhi, no V.C. Shukla and no Bansi Lal, and 2011 is no 1975. So let us stop fearing our own shadow, and get our own house in order for sure to repair the social contract with the people. It’s time to internally debate and set up professional institutions to ensure fairness in reporting and comment and, most importantly, ethical conduct. But it is also necessary to tell anybody in the establishment giving us unsolicited advice where to get off.


Also read: For women in the press like Rana Ayyub, it’s scarily easy for online threats to turn physical


 

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