Freedom and Ethical Dimensions of Press in India: An Appraisal

The mode and mechanism of media accountability varies from country to country. They take shape differently depending on the political, social and cultural scenarios. In India, we have regulatory laws and non-regulatory codes of conduct. The ombudsman system tried by one or two newspapers does not appear to have yielded satisfactory results from the readers' point of view. The Press Council of India has been there for over four decades and it has had its little or no impact on the sustenance of media credibility. Representative bodies of editors and other journalistic organizations have worked out their own codes of ethics and their effectiveness is a subject long debate. The information technology and satellite revolutions have added a new dimension to the problem of accountability. Internet has already started making an impact on the world societies. Hence, there is a need to reconcile the laws that regulate media and laws that protect the freedom and rights of the media. Further, the new miniature technologies in news reporting and investigative reporting pose a serious question of ethical considerations, as the old systems of news reporting have failed to deliver the goods. Social responsibility is being abused and neglected in the pursuit of circulation and revenue. The press is giving undue importance to crime, scandal, sensationalism, excessive bias, distortion and misstatement of facts to abandon the rational standards of relative importance. Even the reports of the international committees (Third Royal Commission, 1977; Calcutt Committee in UK, 1990; Royal Commission in Canada, 1981) cited that the commercial trends are afflicting the newspaper industry's responsibility to the public.

There is a severe criticism all over the world on the tendencies of sensationalism in the press and the subordination of facts to commercial criteria of performance and to vested interests of proprietors, slanting of news to fit editorial policies etc. Press is preoccupied with making profits at the expenses of papers' public role resulting in the total destruction of all interests in ethics and all pride of work leading to the general lowering of the status.

Hence, this paper is an attempt to analyze the inadequacies with reference to the observance of ethics in the newspaperindustry to suggest a mechanism of regulation for the sustenance of ethics in the profession in India.