Parliament pandemonium and the press
Parliament
pandemonium and the press
A Hoot special report by Shefalee Vasudev
Is the press guilty of perpetuating a
consistent negative image of rowdy, screaming parliamentarians or is the
Parliament truly a house of disorder, where the decibel level always drowns the
debates?
The Issue
At the recent special session of Parliament convened
on November 25 for an all India conference on bringing back discipline and
decorum to parliament and the legislatures, the Vice President and several
parliamentarians said that it was media coverage which was largely responsible
for the impression of rowdyism in the Parliament. That sparked off yet again,
what has now been a long unresolved debate.
As more and more newspapers and TV news channels zero
in into reporting news with interesting spin-offs, and with the Question Hour
in Parliament being televised for all of us to see and judge for ourselves, the
debate is starker than it ever was. Look at a sample of reports in any newspaper
and the first and lasting image you get about parliament proceedings is that of
chaos, loud arguments, walk-outs and what are typically termed as
"logjams"
Repeated but square accusations about the media being
"irresponsible" and "sensationalist" do not take away the
fact that the Parliament is a place full of antics. The press, after all,
cannot concoct a halla that happened in the Parliament. But does it
balance the reports about verbal and other duels in the Parliament with reports
of the constructive work done? How many newspapers carry reports on the Bills
and Acts passed, the committees constituted, and their proceedings? Questions
arise about both: the role of media in authentically reporting the Parliament,
and the Parliament becoming progressively a place for loud disagreements rather
than serious debates and serious work. How else does one justify the need for
the new 60-point code of conduct for Parliamentarians and legislators?
The Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Mr
Pramod Mahajan was quick to point out at the special conference that "When
time is lost through adjournments the press reports it, screams from rooftop,
but when Parliament sits late into night to finish business, the press does not
highlight that." The Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha Mr Krishan Kant also
fuelled the accusation by saying, "Make a five-minute halla and
press will report it. Make a one-hour learned intervention, and press will not
give in one line."
Few journalists accept this. As Editor in Chief of The
Pioneer Mr Chandan Mitra puts it, "They are talking through their hat
when they make these accusations. Why don¿t they stop shouting and then see
what the press actually reports?"
The Study
At The Hoot.org, we did a sample study of clippings of Parliament reports in five mainstream English newspapers during Budget Session, 2001. The period covered was between 16th of February to 28th of April, 2001, the day after the budget session of the 13th Lok Sabha was adjourned. This year¿s unusually disrupted budget session, labeled as the "saddest" by some, concluded on April 27th with incomplete business. The number of bills passed in both Houses in the Budget session was only 12 as compared to the 39 in the following monsoon session. By itself, this session was a classic module of study because the Lok Sabha lost an estimated 52