{"id":117867,"date":"2021-09-06T16:47:06","date_gmt":"2021-09-06T23:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=117867"},"modified":"2021-09-06T16:47:06","modified_gmt":"2021-09-06T23:47:06","slug":"self-reform-and-financial-transparency-in-media-need-of-the-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/09\/06\/self-reform-and-financial-transparency-in-media-need-of-the-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Self-reform and financial transparency in media need of the hour’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nava J Thakuria<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Guwahati: Can the mainstream newspapers and\nsatellite news channels be compelled to make their annual balance sheets public\nin India? Or will it be possible to ask the professional journalists to go for\nself-declarations about their assets so that they can question the financial\nintegrity of individuals in other professions including in politics!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Union information & broadcasting\nministry in New Delhi has taken initiatives to review the guidelines for\nworking journalist\u2019s welfare schemes, a northeast India based scribes\u2019 body\nurged the mainstream media houses and seasoned journalists of the country to\ndisplay transparencies in their financial transactions to qualify for such benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Journalists\u2019 Forum Assam (JFA), in a recent\nmedia statement, opined that the professional media houses should show their financial\nbalance-sheets describing how much money they spent annually for the benefits\nof their regular employees including the working journalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time the so-called rich and\nglamorous journalists should reveal their assets (along with liabilities) as\nthey demand transparencies from employees in other sectors. It becomes\nnecessary to  reduce the erosion in  goodwill from their valued readers, listeners\nand viewers before it\u2019s too late, asserted the forum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mentionable is that the I&B ministry (under\nthe Government of India) decided to have a look at the existing guidelines of\nvarious journo-welfare schemes and get appropriate recommendations for the\nrequired changes. The changing media scenario has made it necessary to redefine\nthe professional guidelines of journalists, who are duly engaged with both\ntraditional and modern\/digital media outlets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The review committee is expected to\nmaintain the parity between the government accredited (recognized) and non-recognized\nscribes as the acknowledgement rules may vary from one State to another. For\nany reason, an accredited journalist should not be considered as an elite, because\nthe status could be altered abruptly with the change professional portfolios in\nthe media houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Headed by renowned journalist Ashok Kumar\nTandon, the committee comprises senior scribes namely Sachidanand Murthy,\nShekhar Aiyar, Amitabh Sinha, Shishir Kumar Sinha, Ravinder Kumar, Hitesh\nShankar, Smriti K Ramachandran, Amit Kumar, Vasudha Venugopal along with Kanchan\nPrasad from Press Information Bureau as its members and it is expected to\nsubmit the report within two months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the government run Registrar\nof Newspapers for India (RNI), the country with one billion plus population has\nover 1,15,000 registered publications with more than  17,500 in the \nnewspaper category. Those are published in different languages including\nEnglish, Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Malayalam,\nKannadi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Odia, Assamese, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Largest democracy of the world has over\n1,600 satellite television channels where more than 400 are news related\noutlets. At the same time, over 300 million Indians use social media in\ndifferent categories. Lately many professional Indian journalists have\nabandoned the mainstream media (where many of them were sacked by the\nmanagements) and joined the digital platforms to exercise the freedom of\nexpression guaranteed by the country\u2019s constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need to discuss on the importance of\ndigital (alternate) media urgently and if the journalists engaged with those\noutlets could be recognized as working journalists enabling them to receive all\nkinds of legitimate government benefits,\u201d said JFA president Rupam Barua,\nadding that the professional journalists should establish their integrity first\nas an exemplary manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier, the forum commended the concern\nexpressed by Madras High Court in a recent directive to Tamil Nadu government\nto constitute a press council so that the menace of fake news\/journalists can\nbe legally addressed. The court ordered the State government in Chennai to form\n\u2018Press Council of Tamil Nadu\u2019 within three months to eliminate the bogus journalists\nfrom the media fraternity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The court observed that it becomes a common\nsight these days to find posh cars with \u2018Press\u2019 stickers on the front\nwindshield being driven by unscrupulous fraudsters masquerading as working\njournalists. There have been quite a number of instances of such fraudsters\nbeing booked by the police. Politicians, land sharks, smugglers and even\nmurderers have been seen to be hand in glove with these journalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The State directorate of information and\npublic relations is aware of this, but the officials turn a blind eye, to avoid\nany wrath in the hands of those fake journalists. This needs to be stopped to\nensure that journalism remains clean and strong. In view of the above position,\nnecessary directions have to be issued to clean up the media in the interest of\npublic, added the court observation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The court even asked the government to\navoid allotting any house or grant  directly\nto any applicant journalists unless it is routed through the council to be\nconstituted, which after due diligence can issue such benefits. It shall\nprohibit conduct of State conferences or meetings by journalist\u2019s associations\nwithout permission or approval from the council, which shall get details on the\nsource of income and other relevant details before giving permission to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The common people aggrieved by the fake\nnews or motivated and agenda-based news can send their complaints on fake\njournalists to the welfare board, which shall inquire and initiate criminal\naction against such scribes as they are simply a menace and threat to the society.\nThe council is proposed to have the power to direct  the carrier of offending news items for a\nrejoinder or an apology urgently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nava J Thakuria Guwahati: Can the mainstream newspapers and satellite news channels be compelled to make their annual balance sheets public in India? Or will it be possible to ask the professional journalists to go for self-declarations about their assets so that they can question the financial integrity of individuals in other professions including in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nava-thakuria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}