Source: The Hindu
Subject: Governance
Topic: Accountability
Issue: Free media to ensure accountability
Context: The Fourth Estate having slipped from its true place in a democracy is a serious concern and there’s much to do to set things right again.
Synopsis:
- Various issues such as economic growth, the freeing of broadcast media from government control and the internet have transformed media since 1991.
- This has led to an explosion of media in terms quantity and style.
Key issues with the current functioning of media:
- “Breaking news” culture and the search for the villain of the day.
- The audiovisual media today serves simultaneously as witness, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner.
- Social media, with its culture of unverified “fact” and viral opinion, compounds the problem.
- Print Media is also affected by this culture now feel pressed to publish without the traditional recourse to fact-checking.
- The distinctions among fact, opinion and speculation, reportage and rumor, sourced information and unfounded allegation have completely blurred.
Significance of a free and well-functioning media:
- Free media are the lifeblood of our democracy.
- Media provide the information that enables a free citizenry to make the choices of who governs them.
- Media ensures that those who govern will remain accountable to those who put them there.
- Government needs a free and professional media to keep it honest and efficient, to serve as both mirror (to society) and scalpel (to probe wrongdoing).
The way ahead:
- Engender a culture of fact-verification and accuracy.
- Insist on better journalistic training at accredited media institutes that emphasize values of accuracy, integrity and fairness in their students.
- Ensure different perspectives in newsrooms and not allow them to become echo chambers forcing an opinion onto their viewer
- Introduce laws and regulations that limit control of multiple news organizations by a single business or political entity
- A single overseer for print and television news companies, as recommended by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the parliamentary Committee on Information Technology.
