RUPERT Murdoch has descended here, in India. That in itself should be sufficient ground for our country to stick to the ban on foreign ownership of any section of the media. Murdoch symbolises the stifling of the free press for any country and his record in different parts of the world proves this.
What Murdoch put into Prime Minister Deve Gowda's ears we are not privy to—whether as a result there will be an opening for the buccaneer from abroad it's hard to say. Nowadays in the name of globalisation, we have been inviting TNCs from abroad—and Murdoch is a one-man TNC—and our champions of free press confuse the media with the market, holding forth that if you welcome Procter & Gamble's Camay soap, why can't you let Murdoch plant his flag on our soil? One doesn't know if Murdoch will restrict himself to television uplinking, but it's certain if he gets a TV facility installed here, he'd definitely move into the print media.
Why should we be afraid of Rupert Murdoch? Some of our swashbucklers seem to believe that by letting Murdoch and his tribe come in, we'd be promoting genuine press freedom. Ask Harold Evans how Murdoch respected even the ABC of free press when he invaded the British press. A former Cabinet minister in a Conservative government, David Mellors, has commented on the havoc brought by such freebooters: "One of the great self-inflicted wounds of Britain in the '80s has been to allow so many national newspapers to fall in the hands of foreign companies who sometimes delight in demonstrating that they have no long-term interest in Britain and its well-being."
Those who have been arguing for letting Murdoch come in think they are really fighting for a free world press in our country. This is distorting the truth, because in the five decades of our Independence, there has never been a ban on the entry of the foreign media—barring the ban on Chinese periodicals in 1962, and the heavy censorship during the Emergency (1975-77)—both of which had been repudiated by all sections of democratic opinion in our country.
In 1955 what the Government decided was to withhold permission to foreign nationals to own newspapers in this country. At the same time, there has never been any restriction on the import of any foreign newspaper or magazine. This restriction came after extensive deliberations in the First Press Commission. While all opinions in the foreign media have been permitted to be broadcast in this country, and their staff allowed to function here, the precaution was taken that our press was not swamped and edged out by foreign owners. This step is perfectly in keeping with the situation in the Anglo-Saxon world. In the US, nobody who is not an American citizen is permitted to own or publish a newspaper.
In the prevailing euphoria about market ideology, one hears the argument that the entry of foreign-owned media would help the Indian press get investment, technology and experience. In fact, the big media units in this country are not starved of investment, while the technological advance in the Indian press has been phenomenal and comparable to the best. Foreign-owned newspapers would pose a direct danger to the burgeoning Indian language newspapers which are the real moulders of public opinion in this country. These would be the target of attack by foreign-owned newspapers.
To call Murdoch and his tribe crusaders of the free press will be doing injustice to the world of free media. A freebooter is no upholder of free enterprise.
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