No takers for content code

The government on Monday failed to make television industry agree to its revised broadcast bill and content code, with industry questioning the basis for imposing the new regulation.

Updated on: Jul 24, 2007, 04:35:24 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government on Monday failed to make television industry agree to its revised broadcast bill and content code, with industry questioning the basis for imposing the new regulation.

Speaking at a seminar on “Regulation in the Entertainment Sector’ organised at the FICCI here on Monday, Asha Swarup, Information and Broadcasting secretary, said: “The revised Bill on the proposed Broadcast Services Regulation incorporates the comments and views of the industry received during the past several years.”

It was incorrect, she said, to say that India was the only country that was proposing to have a content code for the broadcast sector as such codes in different forms were in existence in other countries.

“Within the country itself, there has always been a programme code and an advertising code as part of the license conditions for the service providers to abide by,” Swarup said. She added that “we have only revised these codes and propose to present them in a content code in view of the discussions with industry that have been taking place since October 2005.”

Responding to the need for “benign benevolence” for drafting content code raised by Amit Khanna, Chairman of the FICCI’s ‘Committee on Convergence and Chairman, Pradeep Singh, additional secretary in the I&B ministry, pointed out: “There is no place for emotions and nobody is trying to bring in a guided democracy. If there is a trust deficit, it has to be addressed as the first priority by sitting across the table.”

“The content code,” Singh emphasised, “already exists. It is merely being fleshed out. I feel there isn’t much fear (amongst the private players) than the fact this sector has not been regulated. In any case the code would be finalized by the Regulator in consultation with media representatives.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
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.Read More

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