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Now that the Supreme Court has echoed the emotions of many smart folks and talked about its concern with the hatred that’s unfold each night time on some TV channels, we’re left with the massive query: can something be executed about it? The Supreme Court was cautious to not give any fast solutions. It talked about appointing a committee of eminent folks to enter the problem and to return up with some options. This was sensible. The line between proscribing hate speech and censoring the media is a skinny one and we have to be cautious to not cross it.
But honest regulation is feasible. And it has been executed inside the Indian TV business earlier than.
Ask me: I noticed it executed on the Broadcast Content Complaints Council (BCCC) within the 5 years that I used to be a member. The BCCC was based in June 2011 as a means of ending the stranglehold of the I&B Ministry over tv content material. Before the BCCC was shaped, a babu (or extra not often, the minister) might determine to take a channel off the air if the content material displeased him. There was a authorized foundation to this: varied restrictive legal guidelines governing cable TV and the like give the federal government monumental energy.
From 2009 onwards, the TV business had been attempting to influence the ministry that this amounted to arbitrary censorship. Finally, in 2011, the TV business and the ministry agreed to arrange the BCCC which was composed of presidency representatives, folks from the TV business and 4 eminent individuals from Civil Society. When the Council was based, Bhaskar Ghose, Shabana Azmi, Professor Anand Kumar from JNU and I have been the civil society representatives.
We invited complaints from the general public (the BCCC nonetheless runs a bit of scroll on the backside of TV screens infrequently) concerning the content material of leisure channels. If the BCCC secretariat discovered the grievance to have any advantage, we’d name the complainant and the channel or typically, simply the channel to our assembly. Having heard the channel’s defence, the entire Council, presided over by a former High Court decide, would determine if the grievance was legitimate.
We have been fortunate to have had two excellent judges as Chairmen in a row: Justice A P Shah and Justice Mukul Mudgal. They have been liberal however honest and inherently against pointless censorship.
At first I believed that the civil society members must act as a buffer between the business members and the federal government representatives who would squabble on a regular basis. But by the second assembly, I used to be stunned to see that we have been all on the identical facet. Decisions have been taken by consensus and infrequently business members have been extra strident than authorities appointees when it got here to correcting lapses in content material creation.
The expertise introduced house a fundamental actuality to me; one which we regularly overlook. If you place a bunch of clever women and men collectively in a room and current them with the details, the probabilities are that they will quickly lose their biases, start considering objectively and often come to the appropriate conclusions.
The Ministry had been obsessed with intercourse and nudity. We obtained round that fairly simply by setting a watershed time within the night, after which channels might present grownup content material. As we identified to the ministry, the web was already right here and the streaming companies have been quickly anticipated to reach. Could we actually impose strict requirements on broadcast TV, a style which might quickly be outflanked by the brand new expertise?
Instead we centered on the issues that basically mattered: incitement to hatred, stereotypical caricatures of girls or of communities, caste bias, the sexualisation of younger youngsters on expertise exhibits, the invasion of particular person privateness (exhibits that used hidden cameras and so on.) respect for ladies (a surprisingly massive variety of serials lingered for complete episodes on scenes the place girls have been overwhelmed, humiliated or sexually assaulted), and so on.
The system labored so effectively for the 5 years that I used to be on the council that by the tip, we have been getting extra complaints from the ministry’s screens than from anybody else. By and huge, real viewer issues had been allayed. To the credit score of the federal government (and I used to be on the BCCC below each the Congress and the BJP governments), the Council’s views have been revered and upheld.
At across the similar time that the BCCC was based, the same physique was additionally created for information tv. I used to be by no means part of this physique and we didn’t fear an excessive amount of about it as a result of the information universe was very small in comparison with what we coated (all the things else on TV from leisure to music to sport to way of life). I gathered then, purely anecdotally, that the information physique was not as energetic because the BCCC and definitely I don’t suppose I ever heard of a single main determination involving the information regulator.
I assume that it’s a tribute to how effectively the BCCC functioned (the council continues to thrive although I’m not part of it) that there are actually hardly any controversies concerning the content material of leisure channels throughout India.
Sadly this isn’t true of the information sector the place, as we now have seen, even the Supreme Court has expressed concern concerning the high quality of the content material. The apparent conclusion is that self-regulation on the BCCC sample has failed.
This leads us into an space the place no journalist will be snug: exterior regulation. In essence, it’s a step again as a result of the entire level of appointing BCCC sort our bodies was to arms-size the method away from governments and their political pursuits.
My concern is that even exterior regulation will both fail or will even be designed to fail. Any regulator can solely be arrange by the federal government. And the reality is that the federal government of the day doesn’t appear as involved concerning the content material of stories channels because the Court is.
In truth, most of the channels that draw essentially the most flack for his or her content material are literally professional-authorities. And all governments know that TV is a weapon of mass distraction: it creates bogus controversies to divert consideration each time there’s a severe nationwide disaster. (You may need to flip in your TV set tonight to see what I’m speaking about.)
So who will do the regulation?
The solely means it will ever work is that if regulation is arms-lengthed from the federal government. If the regulators are drawn from exterior of politics and if the regulatory physique is given tooth to pressure the channels to pay attention, then it might make a distinction.
But can the Supreme Court arrange such a physique? Doesn’t it fall to the federal government to institute a regulator? And does anyone imagine that this authorities will regulate its biggest supporters?
So, as a lot as I like the spirit of the Supreme Court’s remarks, it’s price retaining in thoughts {that a} resolution will not be simple to search out.
That is the issue the Court will face when it sits to discover a means out of the current state of affairs. Hate sells and when it advantages the highly effective it’s virtually unattainable to combat.
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