MEDIA-INDIA: Press Barons Hound Media Watchdog

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Dev Raj

NEW DELHI, Oct 29 1998 (IPS) - An institution created by Parliament to safeguard the freedom of India’s vibrant print media has, ironically enough, come under vicious attack by powerful press barons.

The trouble, says Justice P.B. Sawant, chairman of the two- decade-old Press Council of India (PCI), is that the “freedom of the press is being interpreted by newspaper owners as freedom to print what they want and ensure that no other view will prevail.”

Hailed as a champion of a free press during his many years in the Supreme Court, Sawant fell from grace when as chief of the PCI he favoured cooperative ownership of newspapers over the present monopolies control by a few top business families.

Sawant’s criticism of an increased tendency for owners to double up as editors to better control editorial policy and employ journalists on a ‘hire-fire’ contract basis has also made him unpopular with press tycoons.

But Sawant found himself at the receiving end of a vicious campaign this August after the PCI got embroiled in a messy war between the Enforcement Directorate (ED) of the Finance Ministry and Ashok Jain, owner of the influential ‘The Times of India’ newspaper chain.

Charged with violating India’s foreign exchange laws and acquiring assets in Britain, Jain not only evaded arrest by skipping in and out of the country but also ordered his newspaper chain to launch a campaign against the ED.

The PCI, under Sawant, censured the Times on several counts but especially for launching a column directed against the ED called ‘Human Rights Watch’, after India’s apex Supreme Court denied Jain anticipatory bail.

Sawant observed that of the first 99 articles published under the column, 22 were directed against the ED with two of them directly connected with Jain’s case. One of the articles even carried personal criticism against ED officials and suggested their removal from the case.

When well-known public figures criticised the Human Rights Watch column and demanded that the ED be allowed to function according to law, the Times ran grossly distorted versions of their statements.

Other newspapers grouped under the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) a powerful body of newspaper owners gave silent instructions to editorial staff to black out the PCI and Sawant’s statement.

Among people who complained to the PCI of deliberate distortions by the Times of statements on the issue were a former Supreme Court judge, Rajendar Sachar and a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court, R. M. Pal.

Journalists’ bodies which took up the issue such as the All-India Newspaper Employees Federation (AINEF) and the Unions run by the Press Trust of India and United News of India (UNI) news agencies found themselves blacked out not only by the Times but also other newspapers on orders from owners.

Said Shameem Faizee, editor of ‘New Age’, the paper of the Communist Party of India (CPI), the only paper which carried the statements made by journalists’ unions, “the blackouts show how independent the Indian print media really is.”

Faizee said the CPI strongly supported Justice Sawant’s view that the real threat to the freedom of the press in India came from newspaper owners rather than from government interference as evident in the Times case.

“The Human Rights Column is a sad joke – the TOI has never been so seriously concerned about human rights as when its owner was faced with arrest over gross foreign exchange violations,” Faizee said.

Well known journalist and commentator on public affairs, Mrinal Pande said it was hard to believe that so eminent a person as Justice Sawant could be pilloried within and outside the press and accused of being biased against a free press.

“All along newspaper owners were complaining that the PCI was too pliant and had no teeth – now when you have someone with a backbone like Justice Sawant heading it they find it too uncomfortable,” she said.

Pande said she supported Sawant’s proposal for a plurality of ownership structures including newspapers owned by journalists for a truly free press. “Its either that or unified resistance by journalists against the contract system,” she said.

She said it was sad to see Justice Sawant fighting a lone battle for a free press with journalists who are directly affected not daring to stand up and be counted. “But then there are few jobs going and it is a bread and butter issue for most.”

Sawant, who is president of the World Association of Press Councils till the year 2002, now finds himself under flak from international organisations like the Zurich-based, International Press Institute (IPI) and the Commonwealth Press Union (CPU).

In a letter, IPI Director, Johann Fritz has advised Sawant that ownership structures and terms of employment are not the business of a press council and that the IPC should “refrain from interfering in matters that should be determined by the market and the law of the land.”

Similarly, the Commonwealth Press Union (CPU) at its biennial conference in Kuala Lumpur this week said in the India section of its report that “The recent statements and decisions of Justice Sawant are not conducive to the legitimate exercise of freedom of the press.”

The CPU report said “the relationship between editor and proprietor is a self-defining one regulated by its own demands and conventions. Any attempt by the IPC to lay down rules in these areas can only be viewed as a threat to press freedom.”

Sawant remains unfazed. “Such criticism will help generate a badly needed public debate on the subject of what freedom of the press really means and it will help young journalists to understand the concept better in an age of privatisation.”

“These attacks are an attempt to weaken the institution of the PCI and are only to be expected in the new world of free markets where acquisitiveness and competitiveness rather than public service have become the religion.”

It is for journalists to understand that freedom of the press is something that is meant to benefit people and not a handful of newspaper owners – and it is for them to form cooperatives or at least make a unified stand on the issue, Sawant said.

Echoing the point, Pandey said, “it is time we journalists realise that either we hang together or we hang separately.”