The information and broadcasting ministry has decided to review its content code after it drew flak from the courts for the falling quality of TV content, reports Chetan Chauhan.
A new set of government guidelines will now regulate television content.
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The information and broadcasting ministry has decided to review its content code after it drew flak from the courts for the falling quality of TV content.
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“With the court’s intervention, we’re left with no option but to have new guidelines to regulate television content,” a senior ministry official, who didn’t wish to be identified, said. The decision was taken last week at a meeting chaired by Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Anand Sharma.
A fortnight ago, the Supreme Court had asked Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam if there was a single day in a year when a family could sit together and watch TV without an assault on their values.
The court had also asked the government about the steps it had taken to ensure that “decency returned to television”. Earlier, the Delhi High Court had pulled up the government for allowing poor quality content.
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Following the SC’s remarks, there was unanimity in the ministry that TV needed a stronger content code. The industry had rejected the government’s earlier versions of the code, terming it as interference in its intellectual freedom and had instead suggested a self-regulating code.
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Following the SC’s remarks, there was unanimity in the ministry that TV needed a stronger content code. The industry had rejected the government’s earlier versions of the code, terming it as interference in its intellectual freedom and had instead suggested a self-regulating code.
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Till now, only the News Broadcasters Association has constituted a committee headed by former chief justice of India J.S. Verma for complaints. There is no such body for entertainment or sports channels even though the Indian Broadcasting Foundation has submitted a draft on self-regulation. “The government should approve the draft for us to set up a complaint redressal body,” a foundation official, not willing to be named, said.
The ministry officials, however, said the industry was not eager to regulate itself. Moreover, the programme code under the Cable Network (Regulation) Act had been found to be grossly inadequate. “We need a more comprehensive and elaborate code to protect ethos of citizens,” an official said.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
