It is heartening to learn that a public interest organization known as Common Cause should have filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court seeking a declaration that the present functioning and operation of All India Radio and Doodarshan were un constitional and biased. It is even more featuring to learn that the Supreme Court admitted the petition on Friday and issued notice to the Union Government on a stay application seeking to restrain AIR and Doodarshan from functioning without statutory guidelines in a “biased” manner. The writ petition urged the Supreme Court, inter alia, for an interim direction to the Union Government not to denigrate any political opponent without providing adequate opportunity to such opponent without providing adequate opportunity to such opponents to rebut or refute allegations made against them. The Common Cause writ petition contended that the fundamental right of speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution embodied the right to know and the right to impart and receive information, views ideas and opinions of every description including those unfavorable and critical of the Government. The petitioner submitted that at into there was no precise law or code that obliged the authorities to maintain proper balance in the presentation of news and views, allotment of time to different persons and political parties and grounds for refusal of access and other related matters. The writ petition further alleged that the present functioning of the AIR and Doodarshan was “discriminatory, arbitrary and unfair” and that manipulations of the electronic media in promoting the interests of the ruling party was violative of the process of free and fair elections guaranteed by the Constitution.

It is quite unlikely that the electronic media will ever be allowed to become autonomous, regardless of which political party is in power at the Centre. The Janata Government even with all its pious protestations about the freedom of expression, developed cold feet when it came to granting autonomy to the electronic media. However, it did manage to maintain a semblance of distinction between a government media run on the taxpayers money and a potent instrument for furthering the ambitions of the ruling party that has come its way. The present Information and Broadcasting Ministry and more particularly is Minister of state, K.K Tiwari has no quams, whatsoever about turning the electronic media primarily into a mouthpiece of the ruling party. Two of his recent statements defending the present role of the electronic media are particularly relevant: (a) that no one was equal to Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister, and that the ruling party was accountable to Parliament and to the people alone; and (b) that credibility was the concern of only the cocktail circuit. What has got clouded somewhere along the way is the Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s ability to distinguish between Rajiv Gandhi the Prime Minister and Rajiv Gandhi, the President of the Congress (I). And when the likes of Mr. K.K. Tiwari talk about accountability to Parliament and the people, they are thinking about if only the Congress (I) that constitutes the majority of the people’s representatives in Parliament.

As for credibility, Tiwari has clearly indicated that he has no time for it at all. And when H.K.L Bhagat the Information and Broadcasting Minister asserts that Doordarshan has given more coverage to the other political parties than to the Congress (I) he obviously relying on ‘convenient’ rather than credible data. He neglects to observe that opposition leaders are rarely ever allowed to appear on the screen.

Perhaps the only silver lining in all this is that a prevision of the official media has the inevitable recoil effect of insulating the Prime Minister from the nation and preventing him from receiving valuable feedback, as it did Indira Gandhi. The real beneficiaries are, thus, the coterie surrounding the Prime Minister. Indira Gandhi realized the folly of Press censorship. It is very unlikely that Rajiv Gandhi will realize the folly of Doodatshan censorship, since directives to its news staff from the Prime Minister’s office have now become standard practice. As for the nation itself, it can hope to find a modieum of relief only from public interest litigants like Common Cause and from the Supreme Court.

 

Article extracted from this publication >>  September 29, 1989