Big brother

Content monitoring has an Orwellian feel to it which should worry all journalists and society at large

It had to happen. The information and broadcasting ministry has stepped in where it should not have.

Its decision to set up a special cell to monitor television programmes that violate the Programmes and Advertising Codes under Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995 may appear motivated by altruistic, high-minded objectives, but has the potential of a unwanted governmental interference.

But anyone in the business should have seen it coming.

The explosion of television news channels in India has stretched to the extreme the ethics of journalism. In recent days, after telecasts following the murder of Arushi in Noida, even the public is looking a bit askance.

Already the proposed broadcasting bill with its code for media organisations has come in for severe criticism, especially from TV news channels.

It is true that in the abstract, freedom of expression in a democracy is absolute; this includes the power vested in the media. However, the media is also subject to the laws of the land.

Any attempt to muzzle the press has been criticised by the media itself and by civil society. The blot of the Emergency and its media censorship still sits heavily on our record as a democracy.

However, the outbreak of television news channels, with their peculiar brand of news coverage has created a very piquant situation for us all — viewers, the government, the print media and serious media practitioners in general.

The basic ethics of journalism by which newspapers are bound do not seem to apply to TV news. Though there are responsible journalists and channels, the overall impression is of a media gone berserk. Instead of news, viewers get wild speculation, sting operations, interference in police procedure and intrusiveness into private life.

Programmes that follow the occult and delve into the seamy side of life masquerade as news.

And there is the endless looping of the same pictures which look ‘live’ but are in fact recorded well before. This becomes particularly harmful during floods and riots where old happenings are presented as current.

Something, clearly, had to give, because even audiences, the supposed target of this kind of tabloid journalism, were getting fed up.

The question remains whether this realisation that change is necessary ought to have come from within the TV news industry in its search for TRPs at any cost, or whether the government has a right to enter the picture. Content monitoring has an Orwellian feel to it which should worry all journalists and society at large.

However, in the ultimate analysis, the Rs16 crore monitoring centre at the Prasar Bharati office in New Delhi must be resisted. At the same time the industry itself must look within and do some course correction before events go much further.