In a bold statement, Vice President Mohmmad Hamid Ansari on Wednesday reminded journalists their primary duty of protecting the people's right to information and referred to the 'pay packages' given to them by political parties during elections.
While inaugurating the Workshop on "Parliament and Media" on Wednesday at Parliament House Annexe, Ansari -- in his short but direct speech -- said: "The Press Council has noted that paid news could cause double jeopardy to Indian democracy through a damaging influence on press functioning as well as on the free and fair election process. It underscored the urgent need to protect the public's right to information so that it was not misled in deciding the selection quotient of the candidates contesting elections."
He said, "Eminent journalist P Sainath has recently exposed the extensive malpractice of "paid news" and "coverage packages" that were deployed during recent elections in some states. The Press Council of India's guidelines to media call for "not accepting or publishing any advertisement at the cost of the public exchequer regarding achievements of a party/government in power."
They also state that 'the press shall not accept any kind of inducement, financial or otherwise, to project a candidate/party', he added.
Talking about issues faced by Indian media, Ansari said: "Growth always has a price. We can evaluate the price paid for the rapid growth of media along two dimensions. First, lack of a concerted effort to train media professionals at the same pace as the growth of media organisations has meant that quality has suffered and there is extensive
competition for existing media professionals. Media groups are trying to tide over the problem by instituting in-house media training institutes but the results so far have not been encouraging."
"Second, the explosive growth in the media sector has highlighted the fact that the Fourth Estate is the only one among the pillars of democracy that has an identifiable commercial and explicitly for-profit persona. While the primary professional duty of media organisations is to their readership for keeping them informed and appraised with news, views and ideas, the commercial logic brings in a new set of stakeholders in the form of the shareholders of these companies," he added.
Ansari hit the nerve point of many journalists and editors present in the hall when he said, "Today, the demands of professional journalists are carefully balanced with the interests of owners and stakeholders of media companies and their cross media interests. The interplay of these conflicting demands is evident and subject of public debate."
He emphasised that, "professional training of journalists can be imparted with greater ease and Wednesday's workshop is one such effort. The difficult part is to resurrect the professional and ethical dimension of journalism. An initial step is to bring back the decisive role of the editor of a media organisation and to dampen the interference of activist marketing departments in news content and coverage".
Vice President Ansari also thanked 'the excellent work done by the Media Advisory Committee in the last year and a half under the Chairmanship of Dr Harish Khare and Vijay Naik'. The Vice President's speech was followed by panel discussion in which eminent editors N Ram, Vinod Sharma, Mrinal Pande participated.