Practice is never quite perfect, but certain fine distinctions in principle have been embedded in the identity of the news media as part of its compact with the public. Over the last quarter century, these distinctions have gradually been effaced, often by stealth, and almost always without penalties. Today, the greatest rewards are assured to those who profess least respect for once honoured media conventions.
Ownership interests in the Indian media, as against the public news dissemination function, were already unfettered by the early-1990s, when economic policy underwent a radical transformation. The quarter century beginning 1991, when India entered into a policy of economic liberalisation and integration with the global economy, generated its own dynamics in terms of the journalistic function. Technological changes, typified by the explosion of cable, satellite television and the internet, were the most visible face of this new dynamic.
Beginning immediately after the first phase of the US-led war against Iraq in 1991 – when a cable news network, till then the butt of jokes, became the storied purveyor of global news around an unrelenting 24-hour cycle – satellite broadcasts began to breach the zealously guarded government monopoly over the airwaves. As private television channels began to open the breach wider and the government remained paralysed by indecision, there were forecasts of an imminent demise of print as a medium, since advertising was expected to migrate in droves to the more widely diffused medium of television. But traditional sectors defied predictions about their imminent demise: newspaper circulation and readership continued to increase, though with significant differences from earlier phases of growth.
FACT AND FICTION
Articles on Freedom of ExpressionThis article is from our final issue 'Fact and Fiction'. The quarterly issue has articles on freedom of expression and collection of fiction from the Southasia. Other articles on freedom of expression include: