A judge’s anguish

BY B.P. Sanjay| IN Law and Policy | 24/08/2008

The judiciary’s activism with regard to politics and government policies is sometimes under the public scanner. Now media is under scrutiny and the recent pronouncements regarding the Aarushi Talwar case might lead to introspection among the media including turf debates surrounding media’s freedom. We have also had erudite views of a few judges on media during their tenure as chairpersons of the Press Council of India.

An opinion piece on Media’s role in India by Justice Markandey Katju is perhaps tangential to the court’s observations etc on media matters. However, his anguish is evident and shared by many. This anguish was more intense during the hey days of circulation wars among the mainstream print media and forceful arguments made  that newspaper is after all a commodity produced and sold  in a marketplace. The proliferation of television channels, particularly the news channels, opened up further debates on mass media and its role in a developing country like ours. The dominant strand in the learned judge’s piece hovers around the theme of  social responsibility.  "The Indian media today are largely acting irresponsibly and not serving the people in their struggle against poverty, unemployment, and other social evils, as they ought to be doing."

We need to rewind a bit and revisit the formative days of television discourse in India.  The early days of television in India were marked by serious discussions on whether to introduce the medium or not including its probable impact on the moral fabric of our country. The adherence to educational and instructional uses of the medium allowed for a limited and incremental introduction. The Nehru-Sarabhai development model reposed further faith in the medium leading to major experiments such as the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE). The Space Applications Centre-Development and Communication Unit (SAC-DECU)  model and its perspective gained momentum reflecting strict adherence to our original framework of using the medium for social development. However, the situation changed with the arrival of cable television and what followed is what we have today that the judge is concerned about. Invoking Sainath’s views, his concern is with Lakme contest having more correspondents, caste wars, honour killings, obsession with cricket etc.

While such a critique dominates our discourse which is largely confined to non media practitioners’ circle and meetings, the question is, are the media managers and professionals listening? In the first place very rarely you find senior media professionals participating in such meetings and if and when they do, the articulation they bring to the debate, apart from their overwhelming presence negates the principal question that the organizers had, "Social responsibility." Charitable asides such as "hat do you expect us to do-be good when the society is not; portray the security forces in a better light than how they actually behave and focus on farmers’ issues that we do albeit focused on distress and suicides"--dot their presentation. The functionalist, competitive and commercial compulsions argument upholds the view that media is right if market demands so. Even Doordarshan, our favorite whipping target due to its public broadcaster status, while recognizing its social obligations had decided a few years ago to spin off a Development Communication Division (DCD). It offers its channel capacity and software skills for a fee. Private channels are probably eyeing this as an option too and given the perception about their "independent" perspectives, the social sector may opt for their expertise and media power. We may see more programmes of the kind that is being advocated in the article and elsewhere in a payment mode. Somewhere in our over enthusiastic debates about social relevance of the media we may be missing the choice of the viewer who technically today has the means and niche access to see socially relevant and challenging programmes.

The opinion of the judge touches upon print media and invokes the arguments of the transformative potential of the medium based on the European experience and model. It also implies the growth and contribution of the media in the nationalist movement and country’s fight for independence. In an era when Editors by and large independent of the owners’ views had a choice they did try to balance and there was a phase of development journalism that was practiced with explicit focus on some of the issues highlighted in the piece. The problem was that these issues were slotted in separate spaces.

Now a defensive posture among the response team and a clutch of "resident" editors may be that their content does reflect to some extent at least the development dynamics.  Highlighting of stories in a sensational manner also reveals the superstitious and evil context of the events. Civil society engagement in many issues and reportage of such engagement is perhaps construed as their transformative role. The disquiet of the development brigade  may be justified when we have a problem with a battery of so called stringers contributing substantially to many dailies not having the requisite depth of understanding to contextualize their stories in a larger development discourse. The issues that Justice Katju’s article raises are partly related to the economics of news gathering in the country. There might be many Aarushis  and Jessicas around the country but the events’ proximity to broadcasting houses determines the intensity of the coverage. It is a different matter that many regional channels do offer comparable fare as well including the so called highly popular crime stories.

The debate and discourse on the issues raised by the Judge are continuous. At the academic level these issues are frequently raised and the pedagogy associated with the discourse is also a problem. It borders on the eternal distinction that some hard-nosed professionals always point out: "oh you teach development and social sector stuff, straight out of books." What we need, they are quite emphatic, are professionals who can write on things we want them to write. And we only can offer that. The polarity between media- backed journalism schools and university schools are perhaps hinged on this distinction. At astronomical fees and with the glamour quotient attached to the media they (the new schools) are consciously factoring discourses on deprivation.

By default, mainline media sends out a strong signal about the composition of its work force and it was evident during the coverage on reservation debates etc. It may not change much if the workforce is more balanced but it might lead to coverage that reflects their internalized dynamics and balanced expressions could follow.

The observations of the Judge might be dismissed as yet another futile salvo against the media. At the same time the vantage position he enjoys dealing with conflicts and litigation allows us to believe his agony is well intentioned. "Artists, writers, and media persons must act responsibly and help the people solve their problems. This they can do by focusing on the real issues, which are basically economic, and not by trying to divert the attention of the people from the real issues to non-issues."