Who Strains On A Short Leash?

It is striking that demands to regulate the media are coming from institutions like the judiciary, the executive and the legislature. Each views its privileges and privacy to be ‘in national interest’ and is rarely willing to share info or insights with the media. Now, they would like to lay down what the media can report, what they cannot and how far they can go. As it is, the media does not venture very far due to ‘reasonable restrictions’ placed on them.

The meetings of the Public Accounts Committee in Parliament, to cite an example, is not public. The legislature can pull up the media for breach of privilege. The judiciary has always had issue with court reporting, invoking ‘contempt of court’ even for humour columns. As for the government and India Inc, the less said the better. They have over the years perfected the art of starving the media of information and keeping it under control.

The fuss over a ‘reckless’ media is all the more surprising since much of our serious journalism involves taking dictation from politicians, bureaucrats, industry bosses, policemen and judges. They expect stenographers in the garb of journalists and rarely welcome probing questions, much less an investigation. Who then is afraid of our media and why?

The Press Council of India chairman, Justice Markandey Katju, a votary for more regulation, makes familiar points. The media, he says, has grown so powerful that it “can strongly impact people’s lives”; that while judges “can be impeached” and the licences of lawyers, doctors and accountants “can be suspended and cancelled”, why should the media shy away from being held accountable?

Somebody should respectfully point out that very few judges, accountants, doctors and lawyers have actually been punished in this country for professional misconduct. The ones that have, you can count off on your fingers and even Justice Katju would agree that the vast majority of them get away with unprofessional conduct every day.

Neither the Bar Council of India nor the Medical Council of India have exactly been proactive. Action against an R.K. Anand or one Ketan Desai can’t gloss over the thousands of other cases that are overlooked as a matter of routine. Law firms cannot be sued for professional negligence and even in the worst cases, the Bar Council has suspended licences of lawyers for only a few months at best.

The nexus between lawyers and judges is hardly a state secret; its intersections are even more brazen and rampant in the lower judiciary. When lawyers are said to charge as much as Rs 25 lakh to Rs 1 crore every day for appearing before the apex court, surely the fees would cover a lot more than professional advice? Bribes are given to court clerks openly all over the country. Many of these clerks prosper by looking after the interests of judicial magistrates. The administrative jurisdiction of the higher courts has made very little or no difference to these conditions.

A fairly large number of media professionals, on the other hand, lose their jobs for reasons ranging from plagiarism, soliciting favours and misquoting sources to blackmail and sexual harassment at the workplace. At any given time, the number of defamation cases against media organisations runs into the several thousands. Most are meant to harass and bleed rather than secure any specific relief.

And after all, statutes and regulations do not seem to have worked with other professionals. There is nothing to suggest they will work in the case of the media either.

Uttam Sengupta is deputy editor, Outlook; E-mail your columnist: sengupta AT outlookindia.com