Fairness doctrine

Media can’t abandon the basic tenets of the profession

While hearing a defamation case last week, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra had some stern and noteworthy words for the media. “We respect freedom of the press,” said the chief justice, “but it has to act responsibly”. He added: “The electronic media can’t think they become Popes overnight.” The implications of Justice Misra’s words are worth examining carefully. They suggest that the news media, and in particular television news, has strained the patience of the higher judiciary in India. This is understandable. As Justice Misra went on to point out, “many in the electronic media think they can write anything”. He then asked, rhetorically, if it was journalism for some outlets to just create works of imagination and get away with it.

The chief justice’s exasperation is widely shared. The media cannot expect social or judicial support, with respect to free speech, if they abandon the basic tenets of the profession. It is also irrational to suppose that political or judicial support for free speech, always tenuous, will survive a free-for-all in the media. It is therefore incumbent on those who care about the existence of unfettered expression and a free media to seek shared standards that address the concerns of the chief justice and those who share their views. Without an effective free press, democratic processes cannot function. But currently the media is not effective, given that sections of the electronic media have simply no internal checks on their reporting; and in the absence of this effectiveness, the press may soon also cease to be free. There is little doubt, therefore, that the abandonment of fact-checking and of even a pretence to fairness by the electronic media have put into jeopardy not just freedom of speech but also the smooth working of democracy itself.

An attempt to correct this slide in journalistic standards is thus overdue. For many decades, the Federal Communications Commission in the United States upheld what was called a “fairness doctrine”, under which all sides of an important issue had to be given a reasonable hearing. This doctrine continued to hold for decades, and was upheld by the US judicial system — which places a stronger emphasis on the freedom of speech than most others worldwide. The rule was unfortunately abandoned in 1987, under President Ronald Reagan — and the consequences of that scrapping were the creation of a hyper-partisan and unscrupulous news media, which in turn has aided in the proliferation of “fake news” and the breakdown of democratic norms that surround the election and tenure of Donald Trump. The lessons for India are clear. Unless in this country the media self-imposes something that approximates the fairness doctrine, or has such a doctrine imposed on reporting from outside, there is the very real danger of a breakdown in the democratic conversation — as well as the possibility of restrictions on freedom of expression that have little to do with fairness. The Indian media’s current efforts at self-regulation — such as the News Broadcasting Standards Authority — have clearly failed, and should be superseded by something stronger.