Opinion Trai, try again

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has submitted recommendations for policing the ownership and stakeholding of media, which may be promoted to the status of regulations if they are accepted by the government. The reliability of the media is an important concern since information, communication, persuasion and propaganda have assumed decisive roles in politics, business, society and popular culture, and the demon of paid news simply has to be slain. The issue of cross-media ownership merits re-examination, since its principles were developed in response to the television boom of the 1990s, which did not anticipate the internet explosion, and a radio revolution still lies ahead. But Trai’s recommendations are simplistic and flatten the complex, non-Cartesian topography of post-Gutenberg media. Besides, they suggest insupportable curbs on ownership of media by corporate houses and political parties. Since democracy is based on the right to persuade and proselytise, this is a blunder waiting to escalate into a free speech issue.

Media thrives in an open atmosphere, and compulsory transparency would work better than curbs. Consumers of media are quite capable of making up their minds about the credibility of their news feeds, provided they know who is bankrolling them. Besides, the airwaves are overloaded with TV channels promoted by political parties, and some print media houses have overt political affiliations. Are they expected to wilt politely? And if they are not closed, would it be fair to deny parties that may want to launch news operations in the future? The curbs on corporate ownership are intended to prevent media monopolies, but companies are already addressed by multiple regulators, laws and rules for markets, competition and corporate affairs. There appears to be no need for yet another regulator, especially one led not by media practitioners but the usual “eminent” suspects.

Advertisement

But most embarrassingly, the report does not recognise the centrality of the internet and mobile applications in the news industry. It is as if internet publishing is not worth regulating since TV, the most popular news source, serves almost 13 times more people than the Net reaches. The logic is baffling. Hasn’t the telecom regulator heard of convergence, a phenomenon anticipated since the late ’90s? Is it unaware of the 4G rollouts scheduled for later this year, which will pipe text, images, video and communications to millions of smartphones? Doesn’t it appreciate that media has become a vast, cross-platform mashup multiplexed and amplified by social media, and that it is impossible to control? News has migrated to the cloud, but Trai is still trying to police the Gutenberg press.