Free the airwaves

You would think that once a broad policy approach is arrived at, after full debate, it would be applied across the relevant sectors. Yet, this is not happening in the media. For years, television news was considered to be the monopoly of state-owned Doordarshan, the only channel deemed responsible enough to give unbiased news (in those pre-reform days, a government-bias was not considered a bias) and to ensure that impressionable minds were not corrupted by prurient movies and serials. But things were never the same after CNN started beaming 24x7 news into the country during the first Iraq war. The government has tried to bring in various checks, but private network news has blossomed. And no, you do not hear anyone seriously complaining that the private networks are broadcasting particularly distorted news or showing adult content. As in other parts of the world, they function broadly within the constraints of what is considered acceptable and what the law allows, and in any case there is plenty of choice. Indeed, the news has got a lot better and more varied.

If this were not lesson enough in the virtues of plurality, the debate got activated again when it came to allowing foreign investment in the print media. Though any foreign newspaper and magazine is available to anyone who chooses to surf the Internet, the same bogie of national interest resurfaced. A newspaper with foreign direct investment (and this paper is one such) would be more amenable to carrying anti-national propaganda""this was the motivated argument fed to various governments of the day. Well, foreigners have invested in the print media, those who opposed it on nationalist lines have themselves done an about-turn and sold shares to foreigners, and there is nothing to suggest that the publications involved are doing anything that is not in the national interest.

But even this second round of discussion on whether liberal rules can be applied to the news media has not settled the issue. Private firms were allowed in the radio space many years ago, but only for entertainment programmes. If private radio channels are allowed to broadcast news, the argument presumably goes, who knows what they will broadcast because there will be no way to keep a check on the mushrooming number of channels. In any case, what is "news", a term that can cover everything from social trends to traffic patterns, and stock prices to sports scores? If television viewers are free to get their news from who they think is better/more credible, why should the country's radio-listening population (generally also poorer, in comparison) be forced to get its news only from the government-controlled All India Radio? Of course there will be irresponsible radio channels just as there are irresponsible television channels and irresponsible newspapers, but there are solutions to such problems that have been worked out in all free societies.

To the extent that the new satellite radio policy plans to allow satellite radio firms to broadcast news and current affairs programmes, it is a good development and needs to be extended to the FM (frequency modulation) world as well. It is unclear, though, what is achieved by guidelines that proscribe news/current affairs that do not have Indian advertising and content designed for Indian audiences. It would seem that the government is now trying to keep out foreign radio programmes! Good luck to it, is all one can say.