Counter-Evolution Of A National Media Policy

“NO policy” had been the media policy of the Government of India since Independence, except to protect the media from external competition and mollycoddle them as the Fourth Estate of the Establishment. The scene has changed with the UPA government, after the Indian incarnation of the International Herald-Tribune, allowing foreign newspaper to print or publish facsimile editions in India as well as foreign portfolio investment in Indian newspapers and periodicals. The “Guidelines” governing the foreign radio and TV broadcasters that have entered the Indian skies hardly bring them within the purview of the Indian legal system. All this has been done despite warnings from parliamentary committees and despite reservations by the security establishment. This certainly is a cause for alarm as news is no longer regarded neutral but is value loaded ridden and is used to state facts in a way that stimulates ideation and influences behaviour. The issue is also of the prospect of globalisation rendering the nation-state increasingly less important, depriving people of an instrument of self-governance, and constructing and disseminating social, economic and cultural perceptions that facilitate greater influx of wealth into the treasuries of the miniscule section already enriched by globalisation. The new, virtually open-door policy blows hot airs about codes and regulatory agencies but the alien media, which have for long years sought to spread their tentacles into India, can easily circumvent them. It contrasts sharply with the media policy of the United States of America, the archpriest of globalisation; which considers its national security requires the banning of foreign ownership of American television stations.