1) Does any government have the right to ban a newspaper, news channel, news site, app or radio news broadcast?
Last week NDTV India, the Hindi news channel from the Rs 577-crore NDTV, which runs five news channels, was handed a 24-hour blackout. This was its punishment for allegedly divulging sensitive information in its coverage of the Pathankot attacks in January this year. NDTV says it did not share information that was different from what other channels and newspapers did at that time. On Monday this week, it filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court. On the same day, co-founder and executive co-chairperson Prannoy Roy met Venkaiah Naidu, union minster for information and broadcasting, to appeal for a review. The government agreed. The ban is in abeyance.
But a message has been sent. A large independent broadcaster and a celebrated economist/psephologist had to go begging for a review in the world’s largest democracy where freedom of speech and expression is enshrined in the Constitution.
In the normal course the complaint should have been referred to the News Broadcasting Standards Authority. Why the government took it upon itself to play judge, 10 months after the coverage, is not clear. The Editors Guild of India, the News Broadcasters Association and other industry bodies issued strongly worded statements against the ban and invoked the Emergency of 1975 in their language. It is a rare display of unity by an industry that is usually apathetic to the larger issues plaguing it — poor training, increasing government oversight, etc. The voices for and against the channel on social media suggest that people feel strongly about it.
This, however, is not about what NDTV did or did not do. Unless the company withdraws its petition, the Supreme Court will decide that. Nowhere in the democratic world do governments enjoy the power to ban media outlets. Says Tim Luckhurst, who runs the Centre for Journalism at the University of Kent: “In the UK, such power does not rest with a minister. Licences to broadcast are granted by Ofcom, a regulatory body independent of government. So, a ban such as the one imposed on NDTV could not be imposed by ministers without parliamentary consent and fresh powers. They would not seek such consent — except perhaps in a war or civil emergency.”
Luckhurst, who has been researching the history of journalism for many years, shares an anecdote that puts things in perspective.
In 1926, just nine years after the Russian Revolution, there was a national labour strike in the UK. It worried the government about communism taking root. The then (Conservative) chancellor of the exchequer, Winston Churchill, suggested taking over the taxpayer-funded BBC and making it a propaganda arm. But prime minister Stanley Baldwin refused to do it. His argument — if we do it, Labour would do it too. To date, the BBC remains independent despite its difficult relationship with almost every government. This has made it the institution it is. “It takes enormous vision and strength of leadership to build a liberal press. It is very difficult to see its value unless it is tested in a crisis,” says Luckhurst. The only Indian prime minister, who showed such a vision for free speech, has been Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.
2) Should Arnab Goswami matter?
Ever since Times Now’s editor-in-chief put in his papers last week, newspapers and websites have gone overboard writing about his departure, speculating on the reasons and what he would do next. This reporter alone has been interviewed by five different outlets. The fuss is disproportionate to the reach of English news. Going by Broadcast Audience Research Council data, Hindi news reached an average of 241.2 million people or over 16 times more than the 14.7 million people that English news averaged, in the last week of October this year. In the same week the average number of people Aaj Tak reached was 126.2 million — 22 times more than Times Now’s 5.7 million. Another sign then of the “people like us” syndrome media often suffers from?
Twitter: @vanitakohlik