Raising concerns about the proposed Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2023, the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI), has said, in a submission to the Information & Broadcasting Ministry, that the Bill may potentially result in control and over-regulation of the broadcast and digital media.
The NWMI urged the government to refrain from going ahead with the Bill without holding exhaustive consultations with all stakeholders. It warned that the Bill could drastically alter the media landscape in the country.
In a statement, the NWMI said that it had made a detailed submission to the Union government regarding the proposed Bill that was recently published by the Ministry for the purpose of receiving feedback from the public and stakeholders.
‘Intent to control’
“The Broadcasting Bill seeks to replace the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act of 1995, with the stated objective of providing a comprehensive regulatory regime for all forms of broadcasting content from television to streaming platforms... The government bestows inordinate powers on itself through this Bill to control the country’s entertainment and news media,” it said.
The organisation said: “This intent to control and over-regulate is not in the interests of a healthy, independent media or a thriving culture of entertainment. It goes against the very foundations of media freedom in mature democracies everywhere and will irreparably damage the free press, free speech and creative freedom in India.”
“The draft Bill’s vaguely worded provisions, including its definition of ‘news and current affairs programmes’, arm it with the potential to cover individual YouTubers, the social media accounts of professional journalists and even citizen journalists. The Bill places requirements and burdens on news organisations that, while cumbersome for large broadcasting networks, could potentially put small news operators out of business,” said the NWMI.
‘Publish draft codes’
The Bill, it said, mentioned a Programme Code and an Advertising Code “as may be prescribed”.
“Any public consultation on the Bill is meaningless unless the government publishes an outline of the proposed codes and seeks feedback on those codes too,” the NWMI said, adding that in such a circumstance, publication of the draft Bill in itself would have a chilling effect on creators of entertainment and news content.
The Bill showed a lack of understanding not just of what constituted news, the NWMI said, but also of the functioning of news organisations, when it sought to club them with creators of entertainment content, especially considering the provision to subject the work of newspersons to Content Evaluation Committees (CECs).
‘Self-certification is a misnomer’
It said that the term “self-certification” used in the Bill was a “misnomer since the Bill gives the Central government an overriding role in the formation of CECs and amounts to the government running editorial panels to monitor content being generated by broadcasters”.
“In the context of OTT platforms, CECs look set to mimic the functioning of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC)...a statutory body that has been criticised and opposed by generations of Indian filmmakers... Bringing OTTs under such CBFC-like bodies defies the spirit of the recommendation of the Committee of Experts constituted by this government and chaired by the renowned filmmaker Shyam Benegal, that had called for a more liberalised certification system even for films,” said the NWMI.
The organisation said that the Centre’s overarching role in the functioning of news and entertainment media as per the Bill would be further enhanced by the requirement for the formation of a Broadcast Advisory Council, as its composition will primarily be decided by the Centre.
