Vice-President Hamid Ansari on Friday said the media must stand up to fear, seek information, speak out and must not hesitate to tell the powers their errors in commission and omission, as it was a basic requirement for the functioning of a healthy democracy.
Mr. Ansari was addressing a gathering after presenting C.H. Mohammed Koya National Journalism Awards 2016.
He observed that in its 2016 press freedom report, the Freedom House categorised India as “partially free,” with an overall score of 41 out of 100. “The Press status report by the organisation Reporters sans Frontiers was even more critical, ranking India 133 out of 180 countries in terms of press vitality and freedom,” he said.
Key role
The Vice-President said the essential role of a free and responsible media in a democracy was to inform the people of democratic choices through the clarification of complex issues, provoke public debates leading to greater public participation in decision making, uncover abuses of power for their rectification, alert and mobilise public opinion to instances of injustices and allow space for political pluralism by carrying different views and opinions.
The media should also keep the leaders attuned to public opinion while offering them a medium to explain their policies and decisions to public opinion, he said.
“The media has an important responsibility, particularly in a democratic polity, to tell the truth to the powers that be, even if the powers that be have a habit of not liking this,” he said.
Describing Mahatma Gandhi as the nation’s one of the greatest journalists, Mr. Ansari said he was associated with six journals and was the editor for two very influential weeklies. “He published no advertisement; at the same time he did not want his newspapers to run at a loss… later, Young India and Harijan became powerful vehicles of his views on all subjects,” he said, asking how many of the journals and newspapers today would pass Gandhiji’s test.
Quoting John Rawls’s book A Theory of Justice , Mr. Ansari said a substantially equal access to the media was an essential requirement to prevent politics being captured by concentrations of private economic power, which would make it impossible for equally-able citizens to have equal opportunities to influence politics regardless of their class.
