The Standing Committee on IT has invited comments on "Paid News" - as usual, the window for comments is a short two weeks, and the deadline is on Jan 1. Some preliminary thoughts: Paid news is the outcome of structural incongruence – lack of regulation of a powerful profit-making (and seeking) industry. Efforts to plug one manifestation (e.g., monitoring media by the Election Commission as in the Bihar polls) will be easily bypassed with time. Therefore the menace of paid news cannot be addressed in isolation of overall media reform that addresses issues of ownership, financial viability, employment terms of individual journalists, and media regulation.
Paid News and Media Reform
Paid News and Media Reform
Paid News and Media Reform
The Standing Committee on IT has invited comments on "Paid News" - as usual, the window for comments is a short two weeks, and the deadline is on Jan 1. Some preliminary thoughts: Paid news is the outcome of structural incongruence – lack of regulation of a powerful profit-making (and seeking) industry. Efforts to plug one manifestation (e.g., monitoring media by the Election Commission as in the Bihar polls) will be easily bypassed with time. Therefore the menace of paid news cannot be addressed in isolation of overall media reform that addresses issues of ownership, financial viability, employment terms of individual journalists, and media regulation.