Why TRAI is utterly wrong about cross-media ownership

Rahul Khullar, the Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), presumably has more important problems he needs to attend to – a struggling telecom industry, failure to stop pesky tele-callers, poor network quality, etc, etc – before fretting about press freedom. But he has waded deep into territory he seems to know little about. In an interview to The Hindu, he says he wants to restrict cross-media ownership and recommend an “institutional buffer between corporate owners and newspaper management.” The reason, he says, is that “the media serves public interest” and a “problem arises when the corporate (owner) wants to abuse the media it controls to project a coloured point of view for vested interests.” Almost coincidentally, The Times of India’s Executive Editor, Arindam Sengupta, provides a counter to Khullar’s views on cross-media ownership – where he explains the context in which restrictions on cross-media ownership were introduced in the west (limited plurality, and lack of alternate sources of information in many geographies). [caption id=“attachment_886511” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  TRAI head, Khullar, wants to regulate corporate ownership of media. Reuters[/caption] Sengupta points out that just when the west is trying to remove excessive media curbs, Khullar is trying to move in the opposite direction. “Most governments today realise that the biggest threat to traditional media is internet, mobile and social media - all instant “news” sources of doubtful veracity. So, cross-media curbs, wherever they exist in a limited way, are being dismantled to create a level playing ground between traditional media and internet and mobile. Internet is a convergence of text, audio and video, including TV.” This is, of course, partly a self-serving argument embedded in a correct broader principle: internet, mobile and social media, being independent, may not always provide news of great authenticity, but this is only because the market has not yet learnt to figure out the credible sources from the not-so-credible. There are as many rags in print and trashy TV channels as there may be dubious websites. But as the readers learns to discriminate, the apparently credibility gap between mainstream media and internet and social media will narrow down. In fact, the rise of internet news media can be traced directly to the fact that mainstream media is seen as a closed club and has failed to reflect the broader plurality of India. But Sengupta’s broader point is more important: that it is completely wrong to presume that cross-media ownership is the problem. And that the kind of restrictions Khullar proposes will pose no risk to press freedom. It will. And hence must be resisted by all right-thinking people. Let us take Khullar’s points one by one. One, corporate interests will use media for promoting vested interests. This is entirely possible, and if Khullar thinks some layer of buffer in-between will improve media freedom, he can suggest remedies. But freedom is not threatened only by corporate houses; it is threatened by politicians, government, criminal gangs, and regulators like Khullar and Markandeya Katju of the Press Council. Is Doordarshan free? Is All India Radio free? Where is the buffer between government ownership and these media? Why doesn’t Khullar address this obvious use (or misuse) of state-owned media for vested political interests first before talking about corporate interests? Let’s also accept that freedom of speech is not restricted to individuals: the constitution offers the same freedom to corporate houses. And if they want to, they can own a media house. If private parties can own a bank, or a coal mine or property, they can own a media house, too. And if we look at the internet as a medium, all corporate houses already own their basic media – their official websites, their social media pages. Moreover, there is this refusal to see the elephant in the room. One reason why corporate houses enter the picture relates to the non-viability of many traditional media houses. If they didn’t bankroll the media, many journalists would lose their jobs. So to label corporates as villains when they are actually white knights in some cases is wrong. Freedom, in case, is never without strings, as I have argued before. It is only the media as a collective that can be free - not every medium or publication in itself. Two, the suggestion that cross-media ownership is somehow bad shows how dated Khullar’s ideas really are. Today, mainstream media is being threatened by the internet. To survive in this era of free information enabled by cheap technology, they have to own or be present in multiple forms of media – from TV stations to websites to print to social media. The internet levels the field so much that traditional media cannot survive if it does not own rival media. There is no entry barrier to news on the internet – where almost anyone can become a journalist – and the web is, in fact, the ultimate medium that can pump text, voice, video and images anyway. Tomorrow, if Firstpost owns a TV station, a print product and other such media, will Trai ban us for cross-media ownership? In fact, by doing so, Trai will be achieving the exact opposite of what it claims to be doing: preventing us from serving the “public interest” as we see it. The government’s main purpose in talking about the evils of cross-media ownership is to ensure that each media segment remains unviable and in need of government support. Media freedom will then doubly imperilled. Three, even the public interest argument can be overblown. No matter what media you own or run, public interest is a matter of subjective definition. What is public interest? If a corporate house, for example, campaigns for privatisation of the public sector, is this vested interest or just a point of view, however self-serving? If the Congress party uses official and paid media to tom-tom its so-called NREGA achievements, is this part of “public interest” or private political interest masquerading as public interest? The best way to serve public interest is by allowing diverse voices to be heard. Democracy is about increasing the diversity of opinion available in the public sphere. Public interest is served even if vested interests have a voice – because the purpose of democracy is not to keep out opinions you don’t like, even if they are self-serving. Waylaid by scams for all over the last few years, and given its inability to control the social media, the government is busy trying to see how it can control the media. In the old days, you only needed to keep a few newspaper editors happy to have a largely pliant media. A decade ago, this group was expanded to include a few TV channels with a large following. Now, suddenly, the powers-that-be are confronted with the impossibility of controlling all divergent opinions due the explosive growth of the internet and social media. The rise of the internet is the best guarantee of diversity. Khullar is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist anymore, thanks to the internet. The government and Khullar should stop trying to pretend high purpose when they say they want to restrict cross-media ownership. What they want to do is control public discourse. It’s not possible any more. They have to learn to live with that. (Disclosure: Firstpost is published by Network18, whose promoters have been funded partly by the Reliance Group).