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Just who is the Media accountable to?
Accountability, one of the most important principles of the media must be ensured in everyday practice of journalism, in times of conflict and turmoil and when transgressions are rife – whether from the state, media owners and vested interests in society or even the public, opines Geeta Seshu. Inversely proportionate to the phenomenal growth of the media in India over the last decade is the steep decline in media accountability. Leave alone statutory bodies like the Press Council, accountability even within media organisations is nowhere near transparent and the result is a further deterioration of media freedom and independence as a whole.
The predominance of print, with more than 50,000 registered newspapers and periodicals, has been overshadowed by broadcast media (of the 376 television channels in India, 200 are news channels) while the Internet (45.3 million active internet users) and new media (including mobile telephony) is also growing, slowly but surely. Advertising revenues in an industry valued at Rs. 584 billion in 2008, continue to set the agenda for the content and information that readers and viewers are subject to, 24×7.
Amidst this dizzying growth, of course, is the criticism that the media in India has become more and more ‘tabloidised’ and has packaged ‘news’ as entertainment. However, it is still the primary conveyor of information, news and views in our society. As part of the Fourth Estate, the media is vital in a democracy and acts as a watchdog. And accountability – one of the most important principles of the media – is not an abstract notion but must be ensured in everyday practice of journalism, in times of conflict and turmoil and when transgressions are rife – whether from the state, media owners and vested interests in society or even the public. Technically, no one is above scrutiny.
Accountability of the media, in all its myriad avatars, is a ticklish issue. The print media has a statutory Press Council, broadcast media has put a regulatory mechanism in place but this is still at an early stage and the Internet is largely unregulated but has not been free from state censorship or from the state. So who will watch the watchdog? The state? The media industry? An ombudsman? Media advocacy groups? Journalist organisations? Or, the public – that amorphous mass of media readers, television and radio audiences, filmgoers, bloggers and internet social networking groups?
In the present scenario, the answer is ‘All of the above’! A perfect recipe for chaos and no really effective and foolproof method to ensure media accountability.
Time and again, the state has made attempts to regulate the functioning of the media. Barring the period of the Emergency, the Indian media has vociferously resisted these attempts. Journalists and media owners came together to resist the Bihar Press Bill, the Defamation Bill or even provisions in the infamous TADA and POTA that regulated media coverage. Recently, when a content code was sought to be drafted by the government for the broadcast media, the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) that represents some members of the broadcast media industry, opposed it and drafted their own code.
While there are a number of laws that govern media responsibility, the judicial process is daunting for any but the stoutest-hearted. The general public has recourse to two other agencies – the Press Council and the Letters to the Editor, a space that has shrunk over the years. On paper, the Press Council seems like an ideal set-up to ensure media accountability. It is a statutory, quasi-judicial body, headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court and comprises representatives from the media industry, journalists’ organisations as well as academics and cultural luminaries.
However, the Press Council has all but disappeared from both media and public consciousness. Earlier, newspapers reported Press Council hearings and orders, even if detrimental to themselves. Not so today. Hardly anyone knows who heads the Press Council today or about its work (For the record, the Press Council is headed by Justice G.N. Ray). Besides, journalists’ organisations have long argued that the Press Council needs more teeth and its highest power – that of censure – is hardly deterrent enough.
The Press Council is confined to print media and there have been demands that it be expanded to a Media council, encompassing all media. But the broadcast media has resisted this move and sees it as a means to regulate the media. As a model for accountability, the Press Council can work if it gets more powers and more crucially, if the media industry recognises its relevance.
Media columns that appear in print discuss television coverage, but the reverse – a review of print media coverage – is just a summation of news on different issues of the day, rather than a critique of the quality of coverage. As such, serious critiques and media monitoring exercises are confined to significant events, like the Gujarat riots or the killing of Dalits in Khairlanji. An on-going critique of biases and ethical acts of omission and commission requires dedication, persistence and a forum to voice this within the media itself, rather than for private circulation.
The widespread criticism and condemnation of the broadcast media’s coverage of the November 26 attacks in Mumbai was an interesting example of the face-off between the media, the state and the public – a rare instance where all three agencies were in disagreement with one another. The media contention that the government was unprepared and the absence of a central agency to give out official information resulted in a free-for-all. The government responded by seeking curbs on media coverage in instances of terror attacks.
Most of the criticism of the media by journalists or members of the public were voiced in print or on websites run by news broadcasting organisations and even on social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut, the latter indicating the noise-making potential of the ‘net’. NDTV’s Barkha Dutt, in a lengthy response to media criticism posted on the channel’s website, argued that much of the criticism was personal, malicious and destructive. Of course, the intense discussion and the notices issued by the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting at least resulted in the revision of the NBA’s code but again, this will have to be tested for its efficacy.
While the media, in principle, accepts the need to turn the scanner on itself, institutionalising this is still a long way off. Only two media organisations in India have appointed Ombudsmen to examine complaints from readers or redress editorial shortcomings. While these have been commendable efforts, the results have, alas, not been as edifying. In 1988, Justice P. N. Bhagwati, retired judge of the Supreme Court, was appointed as an ‘external’ ombudsman by the Bennett Coleman and Co. Ltd, publishers of The Times of India newspaper and other publications. At first, the learned judge wrote long articles on media ethics and even took up a few complaints made by readers but these soon petered out and the entire process saw an unnatural death a few years later.
More than 20 years later, The Hindu announced the appointment of an ‘internal’ ombudsman, K. Narayanan, senior editorial consultant with the paper. The editor-in-chief of the newspaper N. Ram said in a meeting: “Freedom of the press is important. So is its social responsibility, which must begin with interaction with and accountability to readers. For a daily newspaper, this must happen on a daily basis.” Well, these are early days yet, so it remains to be seen how this Ombudsman functions.
Journalists’ organisations, beleagured by rampant contractualisation, still raise a voice about ethical issues but this is muted by the absence of a forum to voice it within the media. The internet has provided a forum of sorts and there are a number of blogs and a few websites that discuss media ethics. While this has managed to break some of the communication deadlock, it is nowhere near critical mass to make a difference. Besides, big media organisations like The Times of India have cracked down on critical blogs and woe betide the gossipy ones!
So why don’t media organisations accept the need to put systems in place to ensure media accountability? The answer is simple. In today’s fractured media environment, where competition to grab the media market is more intense than ever before, ethics are the obstacles in the race. Different sections of the media are governed by vested interests – economic and political. During the Gujarat riots, the Editor’s Guild sent a team to meet their counterparts – the editors of two prominent Gujarati newspapers – to discuss transgressions in media coverage of the riots. Both the editors rejected the report of the Editor’s Guild, cooking a snook at their criticism.
When media organisations do not respect their counterparts, or even freely discuss or debate criticism, when they refuse self-scrutiny or acknowledge mistakes, when they cannot even agree to disagree, when the spirit of enquiry is all but dead and the market-savvy cat killed curiosity years ago – how can the media be made accountable?
The writer is an independent journalist and media analyst. She has worked in both mainstream and alternative media, writes regularly for Women’s Feature Services and lectures on the media.
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