The menace of paid news

Don't go beyond making it an electoral offence

The entity called paid news, whereby a media outlet is remunerated to carry editorially a particular piece of information without any disclosure and often before an election, has become more and more common in recent years and correspondingly the demand for banning such news and punishing those who carry it has grown. The Press Council of India appointed a committee in 2010 to examine the issue but, thanks to intensive lobbying with the council by sections of the media industry which were cast in poor light by the report, it took considerable effort and time to put the report in the public domain. The government now, according to a news report, is contemplating changing several laws to make carrying paid news not just a punishable offence but also liable to serious penalties. The one measure which appears to have wide support is to declare publication of paid news an electoral offence. This will put it in the domain of the Election Commission which is held in high esteem. Hence there is comfort over any censure or more emanating from the Election Commission which will thereby acquire legitimacy.

But this is where the consensus ends. Particularly worrisome is the information that the government is considering suspending the publication deemed guilty for a period of time. This is fraught with the danger of giving a handle to the government of the day to punish media entities that it does not like, thereby grievously harming press freedom. There is already the instance of the West Bengal government under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee asking government libraries not to stock selected publications and also holding up payment of advertisement bills of some media houses. There is reportedly also a proposal to give teeth to the Press Council of India to enable it to punish the guilty by denying them government advertisements for a specified period. The problem with this is that the way the Press Council is currently constituted, it will not be able to don the robe of a judge. Remember the tussle within the Press Council over taking note of its own report on the matter.

There are several problems with punishing the purveyors of paid news. One is to identify a particular item of paid news. What becomes critical is that there has to be a consideration for propagating the information without disclosure. Once this is suspected, an investigation has to be conducted and this is where another serious problem crops up. Who will conduct the investigation, a state police outfit or the "caged parrot" CBI? Neither of the options is desirable. So it is best to leave the matter to the Election Commission and let the Press Council censure and reprimand the way it does in the hope that those who live by their independent reputation will think twice before losing their key asset in the public eye. In the end, a lot will depend on the media's voluntary actions to shun the practice of carrying paid news.