Will levying annual license fees on TV sets really pull Prasar Bharati out of its financial crisis? And is it proper? The Indian government's proposal rests on the debatable argument that Prasar Bharati, a statutory autonomous body set up to run the state's Doordarshan and All India Radio, is a public-service broadcaster. The BBC, on which Prasar Bharati was modelled, raises a significant part of its revenue from license fees, and is indeed a non-profit venture, steering clear of commercial advertising. Chhetria Patrakar is plagued by questions: Can DD or AIR, which continue to function as an arm of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, really be categorised as 'public service'? Are the bureaucrats that have been handpicked by the government to head the Prasar Bharati since its birth in 1997 sufficiently professional? Should consumers be asked to cough up all of that moolah, just to be fed official propaganda and downright shoddy fare?
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While on the subject of AIR and DD, CP was amused to find that, in some parts of India, they are not accessible at all! For the past few months, residents in areas of Arunachal Pradesh have been unable to tune in to these state airwaves, which seem to have been jammed by more-powerful Chinese transmitters. The transmitter in the Arunachali capital, Itanagar, is nowhere near capable of covering the state's more remote districts – to which, incidentally, China has been increasingly staking its own claim of late. If the situation continues, all those hooked on government broadcasting will be well advised to carry their "Teach Yourself Chinese" booklets on their next trip to Arunachal – which, incidentally, is the Northeastern state that speaks the best Hindi.
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An internal Indian Express email currently doing the rounds might, obliquely, bring some cheer to tiny publications struggling to make ends meet. The email, sent by Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta to his staff, demands that they pull up their socks in these times of hardship. If the mighty IE is facing a crunch, perhaps smaller players need not feel down about having to scramble to make ends meet. Gupta notes that, over the past fiscal year, while the media industry grew by nearly 25 percent, Express revenue declined by three percent, even as expenditure peaked due to the acquisition of new machinery and the escalating cost of newsprint. It is time for wage freezes at the senior level, evidently, as well as switching off the lights, reusing photocopy paper, and re-thinking whether lives really depend on that costly out-station call. So what is wrong here? IE is known to have a strong investigative streak, but that obviously does not get you the revenue to survive.
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On 18 July, the Burmese junta, acting totally in character, restrained media coverage of the National Convention on the drafting of the country's new constitution – which would have seemed to be a fairly important event, at least on the surface. Invitations to the opening ceremony specified a limit of one journalist per organisation. Burma has been without a constitution since the military took over in a coup in 1988. Now, because the press will not be allowed to the last convention on the new constitution's framing – which will see the participation of about 1000 delegates, hand-picked by the junta – deliberations on the controversial drafting procedure will remain a mystery. The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) has termed the convention a "sham … part of the problem and not the solution to Burma's malady." No wonder the generals did not want any prying eyes.
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