Meeting of Consultative Committee of Information & Broadcasting

Minister for Information & Broadcasting, Shri Manish Tewari today chaired the meeting of the Consultative Committee of the Ministry. The meeting discussed the Leveson Report and its relevance / implications qua the Indian milieu. A presentation on the Leveson Report and its relevance and implications in the Indian context was made before the members.

Welcoming the members, Shri Manish Tewari said that in the last two decades, the media landscape has undergone an exponential transformation. In both the Indian and the global context, certain structural paradoxes emerged, which required the focus of concerned, conscientious and committed stakeholders of the public discourse. While there were diverse interests in play in the media space the challenge was always to find the golden mean so that the concerns of different stakeholders could be taken into account. Shri Tewari added that the Leveson Report was being discussed before the Committee so that the issues raised could be debated and discussed and the implications in the Indian context could be analysed. While the Government had always supported the ‘Self Regulation’ mechanism in the media domain, of late, a need had also been felt even amongst the stakeholders that a model statutory underpinning the self regulation framework may be looked at. The Leveson Report was an example of a model that had been conceived in the British context after due deliberations and debate. He further stated that the endeavor would now be to also compare other similar models around the world and understand the implications and applications better juxtaposed against the Indian context.

Members of the Committee while appreciating the initiative of the Ministry in discussing the broad features of the report, emphasized that discussions should be broad based accounting for changes across the media space which included the broadcasting and new media also. Members also emphasized that while the current model was very country specific, an attempt ought to be made to discuss the matter with all critical stakeholders accounting for the diversity in the media space. Members also mentioned that the roadmap for the public broadcaster with regard to the regulatory mechanism could also be looked into so as to ensure a comprehensive analysis of the process. Members also felt that in order to ensure a roadmap for the future, it was necessary to outline institutional mechanisms which took into account the changes that were in the offing in the different media segments.

Members who attended the meeting included Dr. Anup Kumar Saha, Dr. Sanjay Jaiswal, Shri Shatrughan Sinha, Ms. Ramya Divya Spandana, Shri Ahmad Saeed Malihabadi, Dr. Barun Mukherji, Shri Bharat Kumar Raut, Shri M.P. Achuthan, Shri Mohammed Adeeb and Shri Pyarimohan Mohapatra.