Media Ethics (wriitten by Hamid Ansari )

Vice President Mohammad  Hamid Ansari has added his own stinging criticism of the Indian media, echoing the recent condemnation of the industry by Press Council of India Chairman Markandey Katju.

Speaking at the National Press Day program in New Delhi, Mr. Ansari, who is also the chairman of Parliament’s Upper House, made the observation that “the convergence between news media, entertainment and telecom has meant that the demarcation between journalism, public relations, advertising and entertainment has been eroded.”

Mr. Ansari then asked who “will step in to address the gap when the government, the polity, the market and the industry are unable to provide for full-spectrum systemic regulation that protects consumer welfare and citizen interest?”

To that, he said  India can take its cue from other democracies like the U.K., the U.S. and Australia. “You would notice that the experience and practice of other democracies indicates that media licensing and regulation is seen as a normal and essential activity to help its functioning as the watchdog of public interest,” he said.

“Our democracy is poorer without active media watch groups engaged in objective analyses of the media, discerning prejudices and latent biases, and subjecting the media to a dose of their own medicine,” Mr. Ansari said. “For an industry that has over fifty thousand newspapers and hundreds of television channels, systematic media criticism is non-existent in India.”

He then launched into editors for what he saw as “the erosion of the institution of the editor in our media organizations.”

“When media space is treated as real estate or as airline seats for purpose of revenue maximization, and when media products are sold as jeans or soaps for marketing purposes, editors end up giving way to marketing departments,” Mr. Ansari said.