The problem

FEW of us comprehend the degree to which the media scene in India has changed. What for decades was a dull marketplace with a limited number of newspapers and magazines and a state run and controlled TV and radio network is today unrecognizable with well over a hundred TV channels, and in many languages, offering not just news and entertainment but niche audience fare catering to diverse requirements – travel, food, sports, fashion, even spiritual discourse. Print offerings too have multiplied and diversified. And now with the entry of private FM radio providing entertainment, and university and community groups experimenting with educational programming, we may well be on the threshold of a media revolution. Nothing, of course, captures the changed environment more than the growth in computer and internet connectivity, not to mention mobile telephony, enabling real time access to news, views and entertainment from across the globe. In short, for investors, consumers and media professionals, this appears to be celebration time.

Recent changes in regulations permitting FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) in print and broadcasting has further heated up the Indian media market. With the entry of external players, Indian media is no longer the same as media in India, and with Indian media players now operating overseas, Indian media is no longer confined to Indian audiences. As we witness fresh infusion of capital, technology, management practices and journalistic skills, the media sector is attracting a new breed of professionals – younger, better trained, hungry to make an impact and far less burdened with the moralistic posturing and shibboleths of the past. In short, this is a new media scape, one which challenges our conventional understanding of not just rules of business but even what constitutes news or who the target reader/viewer/listener is.

Not unexpectedly, the excitement about a growth story in a sunrise industry is simultaneously marked by new concerns and unease. Take the debate over the entry of new, particularly foreign players and efforts by older, established media players to raise fears about dilution of sovereignty, of national interests being subverted by those with external allegiances. There is talk of cultural imperialism, of how an alien, consumerist culture is being thrust upon an ancient civilization, threatening established values and norms. Less discussed, however, are issues of media monopoly, the implications of cross-media holdings and whether the emergence of players with deep pockets raising money from external sources or through the stock market, threatens media diversity and pluralism. Do these trends, for instance, restrict meaningful space for smaller, local actors and thus constrain choice?

So how should we look at our media – as the fourth estate, an integral element of a democratic order which needs to be guaranteed autonomy from official regulation because it serves a public good? Or as a business like any other, albeit one which is powerful, affects policy and shapes public discourse? Unfortunately, our inability to simultaneously address both these facets of the media in a situation of rapid technological changes and greater connectivity seriously impairs the way we debate issues of regulation and control.

Another apprehension relates to the impact of these new developments on journalistic values and ethics. Senior editor, Ajit Bhattacharjea, writing in an earlier issue of Seminar (458, Media Trends, October 1997), rued the fact that ‘Rewards available for distorting and dramatizing events are steadily surpassing those for maintaining credibility. Techniques promoting selective enhancement and glamorization have heightened the dilemma. They make it all the more difficult to stick to the unvarnished truth.’

Much of what we see on television or read in newspapers and magazines does provide credence to this fear. In the last couple of decades we have witnessed the slow vanishing of the professional editor, increasingly being replaced by the owner-editor or editor-manager. News and views have become more difficult to distinguish even as news becomes increasingly focused on the spectacular. With the media becoming more a business than a profession (far less a cause), and with the bottom line of profits determining all, is the media in danger of losing its credibility? What happens to ‘old-fashioned’ values like truth-telling, freedom and independence, justice, humanness and contributing to social good? Or playing a critical, adversarial and watchdog function, being a vehicle or public education and helping foster debate on agendas for social transformation? This, after all, was the distinction that helped the media claim special constitutional protection, effectively merging the right to freedom of expression with the freedom of the press.

Few would disagree that a media shackled by government regulation (not permitting FM radio to broadcast news is a case in point) is unhealthy for democracy. And if we ever needed to be persuaded about this argument, the brief experience of the Emergency should be sufficient reminder. But, what are the implications of the commercialisation and commodification of the media? With advertisement revenues accounting for a disproportionate share of media earnings, and advertisements creeping into all sections of the newspapers, what happens to news coverage and editorials? Equally, with media owners having commercial interests in other sectors, does the coverage and slanting of news change? Few desire increased governmental control, far less the pressure to mouth official views, but have we adequately evolved the rules and norms for a free-market media?

There are other concerns. What constitutes worthwhile news? What is covered and what not, how and where? Is perchance our media, both press and television, increasingly unconcerned about individuals, groups and regions that do not constitute a viable market for advertisers? Why is it that fashion shows get covered, farmer suicides are not? Spectacle is foregrounded, processes are ignored. Are newspapers increasingly mimicing TV – breathless and instant – the pressure to be the first to break news leading to a loss of perspective? It should be a matter of concern that even as media organizations add new specialists covering stock markets, business, leisure and so on, it is rare to come across a labour or rural affairs correspondent.

What sense are we to make of the new genre of sting journalism, the use of spycams and the like – treading the fluid boundary between exposes in public interest and violating laws of privacy? Equally troubling is the tendency to run campaigns, be it ‘Justice for Jessica’, to nail corrupt officials or change rules governing land use in cities, often resembling a trial by media. All these raise difficult questions about ethics and propriety, private interests and public good, even ways in which we imagine the practice of democratic politics.

Fortunately, not all our media has been reduced to a metropolitan obsession or focusing on trivia, far less looking at all developments from the vantage point of the rich and powerful. With technological developments substantially reducing start-up costs and greater connectivity permitting enhanced access to news and views, we are simultaneously witnessing the emergence of new players offering distinct content in new styles. With growing literacy and incomes, particularly among the young, our media today is being forced to respond to the demands of a new readership/viewership, one which is both discerning and demanding, impatient with old content and style and, most important, not bound by old codes of loyalty. While this adds pressure on the media to seek creative solutions, it also permits it to explore new roles and meanings for itself.

It is no longer possible to look at a fast changing sector in old ways. Will our media show the ability to be flexible and adapt? And will our regulators be able to move out of a tendency to exercise greater control? The shape our media takes is far too important to be left to only owner-entrepreneurs or state functionaries. We, as citizens, too need to get involved. This issue of Seminar seeks to contribute to that exercise.

 

* This issue draws upon a Seminar Education Foundation meeting supported by the Ford Foundation.