Is today's media accountable? For whom?

India has perhaps the largest number of news channels, airing news, entertainment and 'entertaining news' day and night. The print media has also been in good shape in India, as against the global trend. To add to this information regime, various forms of new media have arisen, some changing the very concept of 'the press' or 'mass media'.  Questions have often been raised about media's accountability.
In the paper reproduced below, I have tried to analyse how much accountable does the present day media is and should be, and for whom.

FAST, FREE, DAZZLING AND GLOBAL: CAN TODAY’S MEDIA AFFORD PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY?

Manoj Pandey*

The media scene today is abuzz with activity unimaginable two decades ago, not to talk of the days of the letter press, black and white films and no television. In India, the economic, socio-cultural and technological changes have been quite pronounced during this period and they have not only transformed the traditional media but also grafted new forms of mass media upon it. It would, therefore, be pertinent to quickly survey the media scene in India before we confront the issue of public accountability.

India has the second largest newspaper market in the world, with about 100 million newspaper copies being sold daily. The top selling newspaper in India is read by over 16 million readers as per the latest readership survey. The top seven most-read dailies are published in Indian native languages and not English. A large number of newspapers have multiple editions; except for some common stuff, news as well as advertisements are highly localised in different editions.  Some newspapers and news magazines are published in two or more languages. All papers worth the name have their own web editions. On the other end of the spectrum, a very large number of newspapers are run by one or a few individuals who, besides being owners, bear the responsibilities of the publisher and the editor. Unlike in the west, newspapers are flourishing in India in terms of numbers as well as advertisement revenue.

Radio faced a downturn in terms of listenership and influence after facing competition from television, but has again become an unobtrusive medium of choice, especially after the advent of FM channels.  News on radio, however, still remains confined to the All India Radio, not the privately run FM channels. Community radio is struggling to gain foothold, and if it picks up, it might make radio what localisation has made of papers and television: very popular, interactive and financially viable.

Television came to India in 1959 and till early nineties, people had only one television organisation - Doordarshan, the public service broadcaster. The satellite television brought with it not only a wide choice of viewership but also competition among channels. Today there are over 650 domestic channels and about half of these are news channels. Besides, numerous foreign channels are made available to the Indian viewer by the Direct-to-Home (DTH) or cable service providers.

India is one of the largest film producers in the world. Digital technology has made the films available at low cost and in various portable, telecast and online formats.

All types of news organisations have come out with their websites. Some of the online newspapers and magazines are updated real-time, and have more in-depth stories, graphics and audio-visual content as compared to their mainstream counterparts. Many of such sites now use social media for further reach and generating discussion. Some news organizations’s websites have pages for instant and interactive news, e.g. the Wall Street Journal has an India Real Time news blog, Indiatimes has  SpeedNews  and  TV18 has Firstpost. Most of the content in the websites of Indian newspapers, magazines and television channels is available free of cost. 

News websites maintained by individuals are not as resourceful as sites maintained by media houses, and usually recycle news and add their own content. But what has changed the way information is shared across the web is the new ‘social media’. First came blogs, then networking sites such as Facebook and Orkut, and now Twitter is fast overtaking them all. The future formats are likely to be richer in content, real-time and available across devices. Even if some of these formats do not fall in the category of ‘the press’, refusing to recognise them as potent tools for mass communication would be closing eyes to the reality. In the west, this new media is already taking more attention than the traditional one, and with higher internet penetration, new innovations, and convergence of formats and devices, it is likely to leave newspapers, magazines and one-way television behind. In India, this may take a while but the direction is clear and certain.

News must be fast and dazzling, and isn’t it just a commodity?

Today’s media is highly commercialised. It will, perhaps, not survive competition and serve today’s tastes if it is run solely with public service in mind as was the case during India’s freedom struggle.

Seen from the marketing point of view, news and views are products that are to be sold much like soaps and biscuits, so these must be attractively packaged and put on display. Information that does not sell directly may also be carried, but only to make the paper / channel a wholesome package or to serve as filler.

When a product or service is discovered to be promising, many producers and traders enter the fray, leading to competition and glut. In such a situation, marketing becomes more important than the intrinsic quality and saleability of the product. This is, naturally, happening in the media world too. 

In the case of television, satellite telecasting technology, globalisation and liberalisation, and India’s economic boom arrived almost simultaneously. These led to global exposure, greater wealth and meteoric rise in consumerism in the society. The highly affordable, dazzling audio-visual medium – the satellite television – showed great promise in catering to the news and entertainment needs of the new Indian. Once a few channels started with a bang, it was discovered that television not only met the need, it could be used to generate a craving for more juicy stuff, and the cycle of more demand and more supply would feed itself. Smelling money and power, existing media houses jumped in the fray and so did entrepreneurs with no background in media and no commitment to running television channels as news media. Thus, the competition is enormous here. To survive in this cut-throat scenario, one needs to have sharp knives: get the news fast even if it is half-baked, make it attractive and if possible titillating, create news where there is none and make it dazzling. These are the  pre-requisites of television news, because only these can ensure good TRPs (television rating points) to a show, not the drab news however professionally refined it might be.

Newspapers have grown organically in India. They have been here for over two centuries and the dynamics of their production, marketing and distribution has adapted to the new realities in stages. The competition, thus, is less severe than that in television industry. But the greed for profits has not left newspapers behind. There is less scope  for newspapers to package the product (news, articles, graphics, photos) with audio and visuals, but what stops a newspaper from stuffing itself with advertisements at the cost of news, selling advertisements in the garb of news, taking money for carrying news and views  to favour a commercial or political interest of someone who can pay (so, it is innovatively called ‘paid news’)?

This news is instant, free and global.

The way internet has grown and the way it is governed, a large portion of information on the net is available free and to all web surfers. Some of it is available to paid users or closed communities, and some content might be blocked in some countries or to some categories of users, but that does not take away the sweeping spread of internet content.

The free nature of web makes it a cross-border media; availability of  free services and tools that allow people to create and publish their own content make it free-for-all. On the web, a breed of thousands of ‘citizen journalists’ are busy reporting news as they perceive it and comment whichever way on whatever comes to their notice. If someone on social network likes a news report, a photo or video, or wants to broadcast a news or message, he posts it on his ‘wall’, writes a ‘scrap’, links it on his blog, ‘pings’ and ‘re-tweets’ it – and the content spreads across the globe in no time. For spreading information, SMS is proving an even better tool. 

The press enjoys freedom in a democracy, isn’t it?

Article 19 of the Indian Constitution guarantees all Indian citizens freedom of expression. Press too derives its freedom from this very article. In other established democracies, there are similar provisions to guarantee freedom to the press. For example, in the US, the First Amendment to the Constitution gave the press an overbearing level of freedom.

The press in India is able to fearlessly do its job even if  a report or analysis embarrasses powerful people and institutions, exposes acts of commission and omission by public authorities, severely criticises government’s actions and policies, investigates into crimes and frauds, lays bare the life of public figures, supports social causes, and passionately discusses matters of public importance. In this, more than the print media, television channels play the lead role, aided by their 24x7 availability, penetration in the population and audio-visual format. Web media, especially the social media, too start their work the moment a new policy is announced, an unsavoury action is taken by a government, a major event takes place or a personality’s tongue slips.

Article 19 of the Indian Constitution also says that the state can put reasonable restrictions on the freedom of expression to safeguard the integrity and sovereignty of the nation etc. In practice, the state [including the federal and state governments and all authorities] invokes its power to restrain the press in extremely rare cases and the courts uphold press freedom except when it is conclusively proved that the press had indeed exceeded its limits. The Press Council of India also supports the press when the press is under attack from the authorities.

Press freedom cannot be questioned, or can it be?

Though conscious of its prime role as the ‘fourth estate’, the press is very sensitive about anybody questioning its freedom and, leave the individual-centred web media, swears by its ethical behaviour. The ethics, however, is defined to suit the media organisation’s commercial and other interests.

In the case of television channels, there have been numerous clear-cut cases of breaching the limits of journalistic freedom, besides their usual contempt for ethical standards. Some news channels dish out cheap entertainment and encourage superstition more than purveying news and comments. In their news, which is more of opinion from ill-educated and ill-prepared mike-pushers, they are too brash, too noisy and too immoderate. Embarrassing and harassing innocent people and intruding into  their privacy are routine. When a big crime occurs, some news channels look for sensational elements and flare them up; and they announce their judgment in a crude ‘trial by media’.  There have been instances of sting operations that were carried out either to generate an ‘exclusive’ report or for blackmail. Even when the television reports on issues concerning public good, it often goes overboard in condemning public systems and authorities, exaggerating public loss, finding ludicrous correlations and thus creating either hysteria or extreme cynicism and diffidence.

Unethical behaviour does not stop at carrying inappropriate content. Media houses and individual journalists are found to indulge in biased reporting and airing slanted views obviously for some considerations.  Corporate houses very commonly distribute gifts at their press conference, or privately, and expect the  reporting in a way that favours them. It is widely reported that some big newspapers brazenly make ‘private treaties’ with interested people whereby the papers carry reports and comments to suit the payers. By camouflaging advertisements and biased content as news, some media houses fool their readers and viewers into believing that the stuff is dispassionate news or fair comments. 

Cases have also been reported of media houses entering into ‘private treaties’ by receiving stakes in companies  in return for favourable news, comments and advertisements, regarding their public offer of shares. Smelling such goings on, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has made it mandatory that the media company discloses its stake in the news item itself. The Press Council has also issued guidelines on the matter.

In the last few elections, a good number of newspapers – big and small, and in English and regional languages - are supposed to have taken money to carry or not carry news about a candidate, give favourable or unfavourable slant to reports, and distort analyses to favour or disfavour a candidate. This scourge of ‘paid news’ is said to be a multi-billion rupee business. Paid news hits at the root of democracy and integrity in many ways: it pollutes the media environment and weakens media as an institution, unfairly influences public opinion towards a candidate, violates election Code of Conduct and evades taxes. Seeing the damage that paid news is causing to the election system and the media, it has been decried by the Editors’ Guild of India, the News Broadcasters Association, the Press Council and the Election Commission. These institutions have also taken certain corrective measures to stop the menace.

Media organisations also indulge in wilfully ignoring public interest. For example, when a statutory warning needs to be carried along with an advertisement, the warning is written in so small a print or is rattled out so fast on television that nothing can be made out of it.  There have been many instances of television channels showing obscene and vulgar songs, superstition, hatred, surrogate and vulgar advertisements, showing adult films in early evening hours and other acts that show their insensitivity to public interest.

These days, journalists are employed on contract and are liable to be fired at the owner’s will. The sense of independence and self-esteem of such journalists is likely to be less compared to that of employees on more secure terms of employment. This also leads to high levels of attrition in media, and unhealthy competition and craving among journalists to beat others by all means. In such a scenario, values are likely to be seen as hindrance to one’s fast growth.

Television news channels often hire inexperienced young men and women and encourage them to rattle out cooked-up stories, stage-manage witnesses, grill innocent relatives of victims, make specious inferences and pass judgements. This has produced a breed of television reporters and anchors who are self-righteous in their approach and are full of journalistic arrogance. And, as they say, arrogance is the biggest enemy of accountability.

It is also seen that the traditionally incompatible roles of editors and management are tending to merge in corporate media houses. In such situations, it is quite likely that commercial interests of the media house take precedence over editorial judgement. Whether the ombudsman would play the role of ‘people’s advocate’ or a PR executive too depends upon the intentions of the owner. An instance of alleged nexus between top-rung columnists and lobbyists accidentally came to light when certain phone-tapes relating to the multi-billion rupee 2G spectrum scam were leaked recently.

It is ironical that the same media, which doesn’t take a moment in pointing fingers at others and sitting in judgement because it has been given the freedom to do so, does not want to seriously look inwards. When, if ever, driven to the wall, it invents its own standards of what is right and wrong. In media circles, one can hear arguments such as (i) the highly competitive environment demands quick action, and mistakes made due to  hurry are pardonable as legitimate professional errors, (ii) it is not always possible to check facts and take different viewpoints on a controversial matter, (iii) competition demands exaggeration, dramatisation and innovations, (iv) showing titillating stuff and  dramatised news is fully ethical as readers like them, (v) after showing obscurantist rituals, giving graphical presentations of crime  and narrating how a tantric claims to be curing fatal diseases by dubious practices, we do tell the viewers not to practice what was shown, and so on.

One top English newspaper has been defending its sale of news space for personal promotion and advertisements with arguments such as the space is sold only on supplements, it is done to stop corrupt practices between reporters and marketers, an indication is given whenever advertisements are given in news style, and so on. While the media house and interested parties make merry, readers are taken for a ride. 

Why should the modern media bother about ethics?

It is natural that today’s media is in search of a more modern identity, one that resonates with globalisation, market-driven  economy, changing lifestyles and fast technological  developments.

It is also natural that old dogmas and values that the traditional press cherished are questioned more often and with greater conviction.

In this new and ever-shifting media paradigm, there is a risk that while the media fervently seeks to guard its traditional rights, it leaves aside the traditional duties and responsibilities that are inseparable from the rights.

For example, the ‘press freedom’. If the press derives its freedom on top of the individual constitutional rights of the journalist or the owner of the media house, it is only because it has a social role of informing and educating people so that they can make informed opinion on various matters.  In the case of web media too, bloggers and other contributors enjoy freedom of expression as individuals.  Since their contributions get circulated as in the case of other mass media, individual contributors to the web media too cannot escape their responsibility to the public; in fact, they are responsible to the people of the entire world.

Let’s take another example, the need to sell. The methods of selling toothpaste may well apply to some extent to selling news, but problem comes when we lose the distinction between toothpaste and news. No toothpaste, for that matter no merchandise, can influence and shape opinions about the essential aspects of the society like news.

Take the influence the media exerts on the people. In India, newspapers have been important since the freedom movement days, but due to poverty, illiteracy and generally low standard of education their direct influence on the people at large has been low. But now that illiteracy and poverty are steadily going down, newspapers are becoming more important. Since television is much more direct and has entered even poor homes, the influence its content - news as well as entertainment – has on the people is enormous. Films influence public as much as the entertainment television does. Web as a mass medium has not acquired power like that of television, as yet.  Still, as we saw recently, social media on the internet and SMS generated enormous public support for the fast undertaken by Anna Hazare against corruption. When Osama bin Laden was killed in a shootout in Pakistan, thousands of Americans got the news first through Twitter on their mobile phones and laptops. As internet penetration increases and information technology gets cheaply available on mobile phones, websites and social networking sites will change the way news is received and consumed, and influence public opinion in a big way.

The freedom of the media and its influence on public dictate that however tough the competition may be or however high commercial stakes may there be, media must remain credible in the public eye. For being credible, it must maintain high professional and ethical standards. It is not conducting responsibly if it dishes out filth and then defends its action by saying that it is what the readers or viewers want. It is masking its professional incompetence and greed if it says that quality and ethics cannot be guaranteed in the present-day media environment.

Since social, political and cultural environment differs among different societies, there cannot be universal standards of journalistic ethics. Yet, basic tenets such as factuality, fairness and social responsibility have universal appeal and are not negotiable irrespective of commercial or functional needs.

Is being responsible enough or should the media feel accountable to the public?

Being ethical does not stop at being responsible for one’s action. If media has to play its role as the fourth pillar of democracy, it must feel accountable for all its actions; that is the touchstone of its ethicality.

To be accountable to the public, in simple terms, is to give account of one’s actions to the public, i.e.  to be answerable for one’s action  - to admit errors and say sorry, and take measures so that similar mistakes do not occur again. One must be able to defend one’s actions to the satisfaction of the public, to whom media is supposed to be ultimately answerable. The public includes the immediate readers, listeners and viewers, public at large, the civic life, the society, the constituents of democracy.

Accountability is not about policing the media, but developing a trust between media and public. If media is to have full public trust, accountability is not a choice but a necessity, and it should come voluntarily. Editors’ experiences and surveys available in the public domain show that high level of accountability on one hand makes the paper less liable to err and on the other hand raises their esteem in the public. Accountability makes media more transparent, confident about its position, and stronger in resisting political and commercial pressures.  As competition from the web media grows, it will be in the interest of the traditional media to maintain high professional and ethical standards so as to look more trustable than the web media that is maintained mostly by untrained amateurs.

However, even in days when there was much less competition and commercialisation, self-imposed accountability had seldom worked. Therefore, mechanisms to remind journalists, and the media on the whole, of their ethical obligations evolved. There are different shades of such mechanisms in place in democracies the world over,  ranging from a set of guidelines and code of ethics to reader advisory groups, ombudsmen and press councils.

A code of ethics would seem to be the best way to remind journalists and institutions to behave responsibly, but often the code remains a piece of paper that is framed and put on a wall in the newsroom or the Editor’s cabin. For being effective, such soft mechanisms need proper environment: the journalists need to be trained on professional ethics, they need to be guided by senior colleagues, there should be internal systems to correct mistakes before and after publication, the owner should believe in ethics and would not compromise values for furthering his own or someone else’s interests. In real world, these requirements are seldom met, and so comes the need for a stricter mechanism to enforce responsibility and accountability.

In practice, the least intrusive, sustainable and professionally the most desirable way to improve ethical standards is to have thorough editorial oversight over whatever goes in the newspaper or channel, followed in the next shift by an equally thorough tooth-combing for errors that went in the production. Whatever comes to notice in the post-production analysis must be corrected by improving systems of checking errors and supervision and by admitting errors to the public.

Editorial oversight does exist in newspapers and television news channels, and perhaps in websites maintained by media houses, but its aim mostly is to demand better performance from journalists. The journalists are groomed to be more alert, cultivate ‘sources’, make less mistakes and write tighter yet punchy copies, but seldom to value ethics.  

Organisations that value ethics not only make systems for responsible journalistic conduct, they also have one or the other system to hold the media house and individual journalists accountable for errors committed by them. Papers that feel accountable to the public volunteer to apologise for any incorrect or wrong content and publish corrigenda with adequate display. They carry all ‘letters to the editor’ without editing [except to make them short and to remove offending expressions] and do take any corrective action that they need to take. In New York Times of the US and the Guardian of the UK, papers respected for their high professional standards, the number of corrigenda carried by them comes to around two thousand in a year!

In western countries, many newspapers have ombudsmen. The ombudsman is an in-house watch-dog who holds the newspaper accountable for its errors or deliberate wrongs. He is paid by the newspaper but is fully autonomous in his professional work, and when it comes to questioning the paper on behalf of the people, everybody in the paper must listen to him.

Indian papers are wary of having an ombudsman, and at present only the Hindu happens to have a ‘Readers’ Editor’. There does not appear to be an ombudsman in any news channel.

Press councils are a popular mechanism for bringing about accountability in the media. In many countries these are established by the media itself as instruments of self-regulation, and are composed mostly of media representatives. Press councils usually act as forums to hear public grievances against the media but do not have enough influence on the media to enforce their decisions.

In India, the Press Council is an autonomous, quasi-judicial, body created by a parliamentary law, with mandate ‘to preserve the freedom of the press and maintain and improve the standards of newspapers and the news agencies in India’. The Press Council can warn, admonish or censure a newspaper or a news agency or disapprove of its conduct, if the Council finds that the press entity has ‘offended against the standards of journalistic ethics or public taste or that an editor or a working journalist has committed any professional misconduct.’ Though the Indian Press Council enjoys high judicial status in that its decisions are final and cannot be questioned in any court of law, and the Council has the power to direct a newspaper to publish the particulars of its inquiry or adjudication, the law does not give it the teeth to enforce its directions.

Nevertheless, the Indian Press Council, stronger than press councils of many other countries, provides a forum for making complaints against the print media. It also guides the media on professional ethics by issuing guidelines (such as the guidelines for coverage of elections), and encourages discussions, undertakes studies or holds inquiries on deviant trends in the press (such as on ‘paid news’).

In the case of audio-visual media, the Central Board of Film Certification has been certifying (i.e. censoring) feature films and other similar productions before release. In late 80’s and early 90’s, video news magazines made a short appearance before satellite television took over. These weekly or fortnightly magazines were certified much like films.  But when satellite channels came in the nineties, the mechanism of censor proved unfeasible. In 1994-5, the central government  brought the Cable Television Networks Regulation  Act and Rules and issued codes for programmes and advertisement. A mechanism was evolved in the Information & Broadcasting Ministry to deal with inappropriate content on television. Many channels have been advised, warned and asked to scroll an apology, and even their telecast have been suspended for a specified time period for violating the content codes. Since 2004, monitoring committees have also been set up in many  state and district headquarters to monitor content on private television channels.  A draft Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill and setting up of an autonomous  Broadcasting Authority are also under consideration of the central government.

Efforts for self-regulation of television channels began from as early as 1999 when the channels joined together to establish the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF). In 2007, news channels constituted a separate industry body, the News Broadcasters Association (NBA). Besides being fronts to protect interests of their members, these bodies have also set up mechanisms for self regulation and handling public complaints, and come out with codes to be followed by members. In 2009, editors of some news channels also formed another body, the Broadcast Editors’ Association to ‘strengthen the values of objective and fair broadcast journalism and to protect and promote the freedom of expression’. These are voluntary bodies, yet try to exert influence on their members to conduct themselves responsibly. These are good developments but the efficacy of their self-regulation is yet to be seen. At least in one case, a channel refused to accept the fine imposed by the News Broadcasting Standards Authority set up by the NBA.

No power is legitimate unless it is accountable.

In final analysis, the onus of being responsible and accountable is on individual journalists, more on owners and editors, and even more on the media collectively.

Media must find ways to regulate itself to the extent that the government’s role is limited to strengthening the self-regulatory mechanisms. Media must also find ways to educate its constituents to maintain high professional and ethical standards and feel accountable for their actions. If, instead of looking inwards for improvements, an argument is made that the modern day media is not programmed to conduct itself in a more ethical manner and that today’s media  cannot afford accountability, it is indulgence in self-justification and escapism.

Accountability is affordable and will remain so. No law denies profit to those who put money on running media houses and no rule of ethics asks a media house not to make money in legal and legitimate ways. On the opposite, the society wants media to grow and be full of life. The only demand the society makes on it is to conduct itself within the minimum professional and moral standards, expose the bad and emphasise the good, and inform and educate the people so that they can draw right conclusions. It expects the media to have the courage to say ‘sorry’ when it commits inadvertent mistakes.

It is said that in democracy no power is legitimate unless it is accountable. This applies as much to the media as to the legislative, the judiciary, the executive and the civil society. Democracy demands that the media must operate in a way that its commercial and operational pressures do not lower its social responsibilities and accountability to the people. There can be no compromise on that.

 * The author is Additional Director General, Press Information Bureau. The views are his own and not of the government. /2012