{"id":5784,"date":"2010-07-17T12:27:28","date_gmt":"2010-07-17T12:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/2010\/07\/17\/nk-singh-3\/"},"modified":"2010-07-17T12:27:28","modified_gmt":"2010-07-17T12:27:28","slug":"nk-singh-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/nk-singh-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Govt again on muzzle media move"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NK: Task Force presents its Black draft<\/strong> : \u201cA judge cannot sit in his own judgment\u201d thus goes the argument preferred by the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry officials who have prepared a draft for regulating media under the soothing\u00a0 phrases like \u201cco-regulation\u201d \u201cindependent body\u201d and Broadcast Authority.<\/p>\n

They have now replaced obtrusive phrase \u2013 Regulatory Authority. \u201cAs a judge cannot sit in his own judgment, the electronic media too cannot be left to judge itself\u201d they argue equating media with banking, telecom, insurance or other similar industries. And, therefore, in para 13 of the draft, they have proposed to set up a National Broadcast Authority of India (NBAI).<\/p>\n

Predatory creatures have a bizarre skill to move dead slow and without any noise before they take the final leap on the prey. The State appears in its predatory best. It has provided in the draft certain clauses that prima facie give an impression as if it is the sole custodian of the public interest and is also at the same time a protector of media autonomy\u2014a sine qua non for a functional democracy. But it has, by design, tried to retain the role of final arbiter. Its NBAI will have all the necessary ingredients of the State\u2014funding, appointment and legislation but it has sought to do it in a circuitry manner so that its intentions remain concealed.<\/p>\n

True, no body can or should sit in his own judgment. But contrast this Government assertion with another latest situation. Last month the Union Law Minister had said Government proposed to bring in a legislation so as to once again take into its hands the appointment of judges. For the past 17 years\u00a0 this job has remained in the hands of a collegium of the Supreme Court judges following a decision in the SP Gupta case . The Minister feels that colleguim has not served the purpose well. It is a matter of common knowledge that Indian State is the biggest litigant in the country. By selecting judges will it not chose its own judge? Can this not amount to \u201clitigant appointing his judge\u201d? Moreover, when a judge does not sit in his own judgment, this job of adjudication against him is not given to any extra-judicial body. Here the Government intends to ask its cabal selected by it \u2013albeit by proxy\u2014to control the media and still claim that it would be an independent body.<\/p>\n

The draft and related documents clearly show selective appropriation of facts, mis-, under- and over-reporting of facts and wrong averments.<\/p>\n

Para 11 of the draft talks about co-regulation but while creating regulatory structure it has cleverly resorted to three-tier vertical hierarchy. Ironically, at the lowest rung the individual media organization has been asked to create a complaint redress mechanism. At meddle-tier it envisages a body by the industry which will look into complaints and will be empowered by law to take punitive actions against erring channels. But both these tiers will be under direct control of the apex tier ie NBAI as it is the NBAI which may or may not except the recommendations of the second rung.<\/p>\n

Para 13 of the draft says that the Task Force has come to this broad consensus (although there never was any consensus) that there is a need to set up an independent and autonomous regulator (mind the word here) to be known as National Broadcasting Authority of India ( the earlier draft bill had proposed Broadcast Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) (all emphasis supplied) which should be both the carriage and content regulator for the broadcasting sector. It further adds \u201cwhile on the regulation of carriage issue, it will exercise the powers of an independent authority, on the content regulation, it would only have an appellate jurisdiction which could be invoked only after the two tiers of self regulation structures are approached and exhausted\u201d. Next para suggests that the NBAI would be entrusted with the job of making regulations with regard to content and procedures through which the individual BSP (channel) will receive and dispose of complaints in a time-bound manner. Any failure to comply with these regulations may invite punitive action.<\/p>\n

In order to give a pain \u2013balm to the industry it has also envisaged empowerment of the second tier \u2013industry\u2019s body\u2014in the matter of default or non-compliance by an erring channel\/ channels but final arbiter will remain the NBAI.<\/p>\n

Now watch the distrust it has for this proposed authority. While creating it through an act of Parliament, the officials are not sure how far it will kowtow before the State. Thus para 19 retains with the state officers the powers to summarily stop any channel from airing a programme (cable Act section 19). The officials propose to retain all existing powers with the centre except one— the issue of decency and morality which they have condescendingly propose to cede to the NBAI.<\/p>\n

The catch lies in how the NBAI will be structured, funded and empowered. It is at this level that media will have no say in any manner except that it can nominate one person in the proposed seven-member authority. The appointment of the chairman and members of NBAI is proposed to be made by a committee comprising\u00a0 Chairperson and the Speaker of the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha and a Supreme Court Judge who can be nominated by the Chief Justice of India. Alternatively, the committee can also comprise Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha, a Supreme Court Judge and a nominee of the President of India or the Chairman of the Press Council of India.<\/p>\n

Besides, the proposal also envisages two other sinister steps –the funding of the NBAI by the State directly and its existence through a Parliamentary legislation.<\/p>\n

Now while the Ministry officials do talk about co-regulation, there is hardly any say of the socalled \u201cindependent\u201d media in all three functions ie appointment, funding and legislation so far as apex tier is concerned. It is pertinent to note here that the Supreme Court, while interpreting article 12 of the Indian Constitution, had in its more than a dozen judgments including Mohini Jain case clearly laid out criteria for what constitutes State. It said \u201cif a body is brought into existence by way of a legislation, it is funded by the State and is appointed by the State it will be termed as part of State. The NBAI fulfils all these three criteria.<\/p>\n

Are we after over 60 years of democratic practices being controlled by the State?<\/p>\n

The officials of the I&B more often than not cite the example of the media regulators in the US , the UK and Australia . What they do not know is : in those countries mighty State and its representatives cannot dare put pressure on the \u201cindependent institutions\u201d. In 1913, an Australian judge could not take oath because a newspaper brought out the fact that the Attorney General had sought the judge\u2019s view on certain issues in which the Government was involved before he was elevated to the High Court. The judge could not dare tale oath after this expose.<\/p>\n

A better option could have been empowering the Industry\u2019s body \u2013like the NBA\u2019s own regulatory adjunct headed by much respected former Chief Justice of India Justice J S Verma \u2013and watch it work for five years. No one can deny the fact that any NBAI chairman will hardly match the wisdom and integrity of Justice Verma.<\/p>\n

But this may not suit the predatory State.<\/p>\n

\n

N K Singh <\/strong><\/p>\n

General Secretary<\/p>\n

Broadcast Editors\u2019 Association (BEA)<\/p>\n

Email: singh.nk1994@yahoo.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"NK: Task Force presents its Black draft<\/strong> : \u201cA judge cannot sit in his own judgment\u201d thus goes the argument preferred by the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry officials who have prepared a draft for regulating media under the soothing\u00a0 phrases like \u201cco-regulation\u201d \u201cindependent body\u201d and Broadcast Authority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1028],"class_list":["post-5784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article-comment","tag-nk-singh"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bhadas4media.com\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}