The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology has recommended that the government should form a ‘Media Council’ with statutory powers to check irregularities in all forms of media — print, electronic and digital. The committee which is headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor tabled its report on ‘Ethical Standards in Media Coverage’ in Lok Sabha on Wednesday. Among many things, the committee has expressed concern over the disturbing trend of fake news on media, and asked the govt to take steps to curb the menace.
According to reports, the committee expressed great concern that the media is gradually losing its credibility and integrity where values and morality are being compromised and there are rampant instances of violations of code of conduct of ethics by the media in the form of paid news, fake news, TRPs manipulation, media trials, sensationalism, biased reporting, etc.
It is notable that while the Shashi Tharoor led committee wants govt crackdown on fake news, his own party had opposed a similar move by the previous Modi government. In April 2018, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry headed by Smriti Irani had brought guidelines to stop the prevalence of fake news. The guidelines had said that the accreditation of journalists could be permanently cancelled if they are found generating or propagating fake news.
However, there was a huge outrage against the guidelines, and the Congress party had also opposed the move to control fake news. Congress leader Ahmed Patel had alleged that the guidelines will be used to harass honest reporters, and motivated complaints will be filed against journalists to get their accreditation suspended.
Due to the huge controversy generated by the guidelines, it was withdrawn by the ministry on the next day, reportedly on the instructions of the PMO. Now the committee led by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor wants govt to take action against fake news three years after opposing the same.
The committee has also asked the Information and Broadcasting ministry to pursue the law ministry for early implementation of certain recommendations of the Law Commission to make paid news an electoral offence.
The parliamentary committee report said that the efficacy of current media regulatory bodies like Press Council of India (PCI) and News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) are limited, and there is a need to establish a wider Media Council comprising experts for print, electronic and digital media, and equip it with statutory powers to enforce its orders where required.
The report by the committee said that the Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 should be amended to change it in accordance with the changing regulatory environment.
Interestingly, the committee also praised the Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which has been introduced for digital media, saying that it will go a long way in regulating digital media content. It added that the I&B ministry and the IT ministry will work coherently and in tandem to ensure that the code for ethics are followed by digital media also.
