Making a Devil`s
Advocate case for strong LokPal for Media?
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| SIMULATION OF REGULATION ? |
Has media undergone revolution? No
one should have any doubt about that. However, is new/social media contributing
to the revolutions as claimed in Arab Spring? Recent Time magazine declared 'The Protestor' across the world as the personality of the world. Many people still argue that technology of social media mattered but this was not technological revolution. Social networks did cause movements and fights for human rights and liberation from authoritarian regime but they largely kept the movement alive and connected by massively huge momentum and increasing degree of velocity.
Is freedom expression absolute and invaluable entity, which cannot be compromised? Why there are different standards for freedom of expression in different media? Once media was deregulated in last two decades, why it is being felt today necessary to have regulatory standards, which will create 'level playing field’? All and other equally important questions cropped up during the two day long synthesis on media law organized by Program on Comparative Media Law School of Oxford University in capital in last two days.
Is freedom expression absolute and invaluable entity, which cannot be compromised? Why there are different standards for freedom of expression in different media? Once media was deregulated in last two decades, why it is being felt today necessary to have regulatory standards, which will create 'level playing field’? All and other equally important questions cropped up during the two day long synthesis on media law organized by Program on Comparative Media Law School of Oxford University in capital in last two days.
In
a huge country like India where political independence came much before the
realization of economic and social justice, the questions of freedom of
expression are also larger questions about survival of democracy. These days
urge for regulation and moreover a well-planned strategy for having a
legal/legitimate say in controlling competition or minimizing losses out of
market takeover by riding entrepreneurial media houses mushrooming now and
then. Today corruption scandals are driving awareness agenda and public
consciousness. So media regulation is also not immune from the grey areas of maneuvering,
exploitation and manipulation of rules and procedures. So, is it fair to say
that political vindictiveness or quest of quality of content is pushing the
regulation debate; or is it emerging media industry which forced the conscience
keepers in judiciary and society compelling to act like a whistle- blower and
thus igniting debate around trivialization of media content, as recently
Justice Katju did.
Merry-go Round of
Regulation- Entangled Web of snake and ladder show
Before going deep into the nuances of
the debate, we should first understand the challenges ahead of regulation. In
the midst of environment which nurtured practice of ad-hoc policy making, are
misuses in competitive arena going to help us? Today there are number of
regulatory agencies like TRAI, Prasar Bharti, BRAI, IMC, TDSAT, IBF, NBA, BEE,
ASCI, Press Council of India. All of these agencies are supposed to inspect,
evaluate and report the dynamic aspects of technology, ownership, content,
systems, literacy, investment and other important issues. Today there are more
than six hundred channels, thus plurality in itself is not a big issue to have
demanding discussion. Even though there are many statutory bodies available for
regulation, the autonomy vested in these institutions has not materialized. The
act of regulation has to go along in two parallel directions, educating
audience and secondly law enforcement. In this context let us try to understand
that self-regulation is ideal concept.
The
debate about regulation must shift from content to infrastructure and
organisational framework. There is conflict, confusion and lack of consensus
about what would be the preconditions for regulatory forms. There is inherent
lack of interdependence in different legacy bodies, which are involved in
regulation. Here no single actor is dominating body. Thus challenges of
multisector issues are haunting this industry. All sectoral bodies lack
compliance mechanism and authority in sectoral bodies is divided. The boundary
lines of public interest and state interest are blur. Thus it all leads us to
fight and arguments for transparent and evidence based policy in the framework of
self-regulation. Let us decode the meaning of 'self' here. Self can be industry,
a particular sector, firm or user. In all of these there can exist two
competing ideas simultaneously fighting for space.
What
would be the enabling environment for regulation then? Self-regulation can be
triggered by increasing or decreasing cost of marketing failure, centrality of particular
sector to economy and available supportive market structure. In all these reasons ability of firms to recognize changing times matters most. If industry is
matured, then it will create incentives for compliance, recognize common
interests and respect the existence of players with sufficient resources to do
self-regulation. Idea of media regulation moving ahead towards media governance
is shifting towards standards and benchmarks because increasing diversification
and convergence of both technology and content is happening simultaneously. Different institutions
have different mechanisms to deal with these kind of situations. It depends
upon whether they are involved in vertical or horizontal integration.
Current
regulatory landscape in India is fragmented. Press Council of India has classic
co-regulation arrangements, which believes in cultivation of public taste.
Amidst all the dust being unsettled about telecom issues, carriage vs. content regulator,
digital/internet governance, role of competition commission, convergence debate
one thing is sure; media regulation debate in India is driven by unavoidable
reality that objectives of regulation are changing at the same time
institutions which were established to do that job have remained the same. Thus
key tasks in coming times are to device the novel strategies to shape time-tested
methods to achieve these changing objectives.
Privacy: The Smoker`s
cabin
Taking
this discussion ahead we arrive in the realms of privacy. Privacy vs. national
security, privacy vs. freedom of speech and privacy vs. transparency (online
records) are new punchlines in the battle for liberal rights of expression,
right to have privacy and also right to be forgotten (EU flattening standards
of data protection) from internet archives or cache/permanent memory of web.
Thus data protection vs. compliance function of different laws, treaties and
rules while we use many telecom, internet and other service which use our
private information to get access to. To make things simple, convenient and
easy to comply to harmonisation of privacy standards is very crucial. The quest
for privacy in online environment is interesting because increasingly
information about activities we do or other salient information about is being
spread over the web like never before along with proliferation of our multiple
identities on the internet sites, we tend to 'learn day by day to hide and play
inside'. So, this is turning out to be publication vs. access to information
debate. Future is quite open to all possibilities of controversies/concerns
about privacy infringement like X-ray body scanners at the airports, smart
metering, breach in search engine privacy, issues of locational privacy, ISP or
Google`s real name policy and Google`s street name disclosure policy initiative
and reidentification move are some of the most powerful concepts coming soon.
Debate
about privacy seems to be driven by once hippocratic and other way round
revolutionary (individuality driven) concept must be continued upon. It is like
smoker`s cabin at the airport where all other public spaces are not allowed to
have that type of content but if you are member of that privileged club you can
barge into any boundaries of insanity. Therefore, hoopla about the
encroachment of civil liberties on internet created recently due to Indian IT
minister`s intention to address 'freedom of expression in compromising position
with that of intentions of inciting violence and 'moral-over riding of public space' is understandable.
Ideas of transparency and privacy are different in different societies. What is the difference between privacy of poor and that of rich? Are they same? Argumentatively they may be same because we do not want to utter politically incorrect justification for the unbalanced privacy for both poor and rich. But common observation and experience is that there is huge discrimination in assessment about the degree of privacy and transparency poor persons should enjoy-- reasons are not at all debatable, they are understandable because our dichotomous standards while talking about everyday life and asking for unification of standards while advocating it in professional arena are entirely at opposite ends. Thus these kinds of divergent behaviors ask for experience-based research where human body has been treated as a global common.
Ideas of transparency and privacy are different in different societies. What is the difference between privacy of poor and that of rich? Are they same? Argumentatively they may be same because we do not want to utter politically incorrect justification for the unbalanced privacy for both poor and rich. But common observation and experience is that there is huge discrimination in assessment about the degree of privacy and transparency poor persons should enjoy-- reasons are not at all debatable, they are understandable because our dichotomous standards while talking about everyday life and asking for unification of standards while advocating it in professional arena are entirely at opposite ends. Thus these kinds of divergent behaviors ask for experience-based research where human body has been treated as a global common.
Censorship
(Obvious) in 21st Century?
Some
voices express concern that self-censorship is greatest threat to freedom of
expression. As new media / social media platforms proliferate along with the
growth of citizen journalism where anyone having a mobile phone/bandwidth can contribute
to the news, the viral fever of Arab Spring spreading very fast across the
different continents, scandals like news of the world, expose by Wikileaks are all contributing to
the changing notions of censorship. Media has not necessarily created
revolution, but it has managed to make its arrival very easy and less painful. Potential
of social media in shaping the political change is exaggerated but these kind
of borderless media is surely not going to resign from its basic instinct to
instigate masses from expressing their righteous voice.
Some say, real media revolution happened in 16th century, which invented printing press and pamphlets, newspapers and books of 18th-19th century. In all the noisy flattering of new media, electronic media and other evolving media, role of growing print media in India and China is outlier to the global trend of shrinking growth in print media.
Some say, real media revolution happened in 16th century, which invented printing press and pamphlets, newspapers and books of 18th-19th century. In all the noisy flattering of new media, electronic media and other evolving media, role of growing print media in India and China is outlier to the global trend of shrinking growth in print media.
Filtering
of content, daily fight to compensate price through advertising because subscription
based model is absent in India, growing politics of questioning credibility
of news information, corporate pressure which control finances are real reasons
which controls freedom of expression and compromises the newspapers integrity
in dealing with socially relevant issues. In this context, it is not shocking
that big media houses are always late in breaking important scandal/corruption
stories. Is is not a intention here to deny the fact that editorial judgment is dependent on competence and in turn is related
on vocatinalisation of journalism, proliferation of media platforms and overemphasis
on technology. But that does not stop the trend of big journalism houses being less and less motivated to expose crimes against humanity. Only exception may be their business model demands occassional dose of compliance towards the proffessional ethics, sometimes it is politically correct to work in that direction and some times it is due to competition or some external pressure.
Therefore we do not overestimate political excitement achieved out of Arab Spring if that is compared to revolutions happened in France, Russia, Germany, Indian freedom struggle. Simply generalizing the achievement of the Arab Spring will be problematic. We should look how the combination of social media and crisis behaves vis-a-vis combined behavior of social media in non-crisis life. So, in India there is moreover no understanding about what social media`s role should be in daily life. Shall we see it as moving towards high performance knowledge exchange through ubiquitous improvement in computing, so that we can evolve into the age where one to one (telegraph/telephone), one to many (radio/TV), many to many peers and group to group communication is possible.
Therefore we do not overestimate political excitement achieved out of Arab Spring if that is compared to revolutions happened in France, Russia, Germany, Indian freedom struggle. Simply generalizing the achievement of the Arab Spring will be problematic. We should look how the combination of social media and crisis behaves vis-a-vis combined behavior of social media in non-crisis life. So, in India there is moreover no understanding about what social media`s role should be in daily life. Shall we see it as moving towards high performance knowledge exchange through ubiquitous improvement in computing, so that we can evolve into the age where one to one (telegraph/telephone), one to many (radio/TV), many to many peers and group to group communication is possible.
Research
into Policy and Policy into
Normally
academicians are pretentious about the complexity and jargon in presenting
difficult ideas. But looking at the media scene in India, everyone besides
academic would will instantly agree about complex web of intricate factors which
have largely determined our perception and understanding about development of media in India.
With media expansion it is becoming more difficult to distinguish between
massification and visibility. However small may be the publication, but mode of
production is elite. The diversification in content and technology is giving
birth to new political culture. This culture is creating critical questions and
demanding positions. Just inviting media to cover political activities will not
contribute to the rational assessment of the political processes. The
increasing visibility has penetrated the governance. Rise of Lokayukta in
Karnataka and recent upsurge in Lok Pal debate are the prime examples of this argument. Gaze of media is altering and
catalysing the democratic functioning. However by promoting freedom in the sphere of established
media and new media, democratic governments feel salvation by giving chance to
express and not consolidating fundamental rights.
Today
media policy research is limited to sectors like access, regulation, spectrum
allocation and data protection etc. Thus contemporary research is focussed on
approaching regulations in sector specific forms and existing fragmented
landscapes. Only interpretation of policy documents cannot be held as serious
media policy research. There is very little investment in history and
ethnographical research. Contemporary commercial models which are based on
language, caste, ideology, nature of content (news, feature, sectoral
information: business, culture, life-style, cinema, sports, S&T,
development, literature etc). Thus huge diversity of the ownership, business
model and changing pattern of readership considering growing economy, aware
readership and evolving specialised interests are drastically altering the
media-plane. Reviving public service broadcasting is utmost priority of the
media reforms as far as first responsibility of the government is concerned. Physical
infrastructure, connections between different media/content platforms, curation
techniques of media houses and process, quality of content are significant
issues of the public service broadcasting. Now the time has come that ‘public
service broadcasting’ must transform it into ‘public service media’.
The
media policy research must be participatory policy research by strengthening the
ability of engineers to interpret law and that of lawyers to understand
technical aspects of the policy. Importance of evidence-based research cannot
be ignored and underestimated. How much policy is being driven by data and how
much innovation is being triggered by enablers created by governance remains
most crucial aspects of the times ahead in the media regulation. Challenge is to
remove the distinction between researchers and researched. This ‘entering into
the field’ or ‘growing with the natives’ approach is going to determine the future of
research in this field.
