Manish Tewari's Bill against 'paid news' is a waste of time

The Right Hon Manish Tewari’s Information & Broadcasting Ministry has turned out to be a surprising defender of ethical journalism. In a recent draft Bill to amend the Press and Registration of Books (PRB) Act, 1867, Tewari has proposed that publications that publish "paid news" may be suspended or barred from publishing.Given the UPA’s penchant for legislating rights left, right and centre, the Bill could usefully have been called the Right to Give Readers Freedom from Paid News Bill. A token PRB Act amendment looks like a wasted opportunity for Tewari and his ilk.[caption id="attachment_1227815" align="alignleft" width="380"] Coming back to Tewari’s new-found enthusiasm for going after "paid news", it is laughable because its intent is suspect. PTI[/caption]But then, the amendment may not be what it seems. First and foremost, it has such a blunt definition of "paid news" that giving the power to suspend any publication seems draconian, even accepting that there will be adjudication by the Press Council, or any "specified authority."Let's start with the definition of “paid news.” The draft Bill defines it rather simply: “Paid news means publishing any news or analysis in the publication for a price in cash or kind as consideration.”The plain meaning of this sentence is that if someone pays newspapers money or some other form of inducement to publish “news” (i.e. it is not specifically flagged as advertisement or sponsored content), the Press Council can suspend the publication after a hearing.By this definition, every newspaper owned by a political party or government should be banned — since the nexus is obvious. Doordarshan is owned and paid for by the government, and what it publishes is largely favourable to government. So is it paid news or not? And what about party papers? They publish nothing unfavourable to the parties that own them. The salaries of the staff are paid for by the party, and the party itself may be getting funds from businessmen and crooks. Isn't this "paid news?"The intent of the proposed Bill seems holy, but does any advertiser put what he wants a newspaper to do in "writing" in order to enable the sleuths at the Press Council to find the nexus between payments and stories published?In the first place, the nexus is usually between advertisements and favourable news — but even this is hard to prove beyond suspicion.Secondly, when the payment is in kind, it would be well nigh impossible to prove a connection between what appears as news and the payment made in that regard, in whatever form.And what constitutes payment in "kind"? Advertising support? How will the Press Council prove that a specific story came only because of an ad inserted in the publication, when newspapers and TV channels tend to cover all kinds of stories which may also have a legitimate reason for publication?Would the promise of an interview with the CEO or a member of a political family constitute payment in "kind" for favourable news on a company or political party?It is worth recalling why "paid news" became an issue at all. It all began with newspaper owners discovering that poorly-paid journalists — this was in the 1980s and 1990s — could be easily bribed or offered minor favours by businessmen and politicians to publish favourable news about themselves or their organisations.Some newspaper proprietors ended this practice by saying that if money is being paid, it should come to the newspaper rather than the journalist. This is how small-time "corruption" got "corporatised" into paid news.At another level, newspapers and TV channels realised that advertisers were unwilling to advertise without getting something better in return. This made "sponsored content" and "marketing features" the rage for a while, but advertisers soon realised that once "their" news was fenced into a separate section or supplement called "sponsored, etc", readers would anyway ignore them. They were thus willing to pay a premium for ads that were used anonymously as news.If readers were unhappy with this, they did not make a fuss about it, for it did not cost them anything. Newspapers are often priced at less than Rs 80-100 a month, news channels at an even lower cost, and digital news is entirely free.This faustian bargain between news providers and news readers or viewers is what lies at the heart of "paid news", not the "corruption" that drives this debasement of journalist ethics. If readers no longer care about the ethics of how news is produced, and are thus unwilling to pay adequately for it, "paid news" will be mainstream. The only figleaf will be that some of it may be declared as "sponsored" while others may be slipped in as news.Coming back to Tewari’s new-found enthusiasm for going after "paid news", it is laughable because its intent is suspect. It is not easy to nail "paid news" merely because its sounds one-sided or favourable to one party. The nexus between news and payment for it will be difficult, if not impossible, to prove, and the law will become an instrument for harassing publications that refuse to toe the line.Some of the clauses are also ineffectual. For example, the move to bring in digital publications involves only the websites of existing print publications. The draft defines publication to mean "newspapers, magazines printed periodically and published in India, including its (sic) reproduction in electronic form...". This could be because of the fact that the PRB Act refers only to print publications. But if their digital editions are going to be hauled up or suspended for carrying "paid news" why not digital-only publications? Most newspapers only put up their printed content on the web, while the really independent web publications are not owned by newspaper groups — and may even be blogs written by millions of people.One suspects that the "paid news" law is intended to give government more leverage over existing publications since it gives government the power to harass and investigate publications whenever "payment" for news is alleged. Suspending a publication for carrying "paid news" is also not the answer to the problem of bringing ethics back to journalism. That has to be done through another process, which may include trust — or philanthropy — funded publications, or even by taxpayers (the BBC is funded by a TV licence fee), assuming news is a public good. But this needs supervision not by the government, but an above-board supervisory authority comprised of public-spirited journalists and citizens of impeccable reputations.The bottomline is this: the party affected most by "paid news" is the reader looking for authenticity in reportage, and the citizen looking for fair coverage of events and developments so that they are informed correctly. False reporting can be litigated against, but biases and favourable reporting — whether paid or unpaid — are hardly crimes when any political party or organisation can set up a publication directly to peddle its views."Paid news" is not for the government to fight against. It is between the reader and the publisher.