Prasar Bharati pretending to be public service broadcaster: Tully
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Express News Service
New Delhi, July 20: British journalist and writer Mark Tully today
lamented the absence of true public service broadcasting in India and
called upon the UPA government to “free” the country’s radio.
Calling Prasar Bharati Corporation a pretender to the title of ‘public
service broadcaster’, he said: ‘‘Here, the budget for the corporation
is prepared by the government, the director-generals are civil
servants, new channels are started at the whims of ministers...how can
there be public service broadcasting in these circumstances? True
public service broadcasting is immune not only from commercial
pressures but also political ones.’’
Delivering the 12th annual lecture in memory of British journalist
Rosalind Wilson, he criticised those who, he said, were manipulating
the country’s public service broadcaster.
‘‘The shortsightedness of the Indian politician has amazed me. The
audience are assumed to be idiots, unable to recognise that what is
dished out in the name of public service serves only the interest of
the government. Rajiv Gandhi’s experience in 1981 and more recently,
the exercise involving the new DD new-channel have proved firmly
otherwise. In fact, the government media can’t even do the
government’s job,’’ he said.
Accusing today’s journalism of being obsessed with fame and the profit
motive, he said, ‘‘Judgements about what will be written about in
newspapers and shown on TV should be made by journalists, editors,
writers and others whose job it is, and not by advertisers. While it
is necessary to cater to the audience’s interests, true public service
broadcasting can’t go flat-out for audiences, there has to be a
balancing act,” he said.
He denied that the multiplication of channels catering to every need
has made the public service broadcaster redundant. ‘‘Niche channels
are well suited to people who know what they want, whose interests
have been cultivated. But the task of the public sector broadcaster is
to expose its audience to new interests and widen their horizon. In
its absence, audiences will be ghettoised by the specialised
channels,’’ he warned.
Dedicating almost half of his lecture to the praise of the radio, he
implored the government to unshackle the medium.
‘‘In India, wherever I go, people say ‘radio is dead,’ but in Britain,
it is very much alive and kicking. In fact, Britons spend more time
listening to the radio than watching TV,’’ he said.
He put the blame for stifling the medium on law-makers and asked them
to allow others beside the official broadcaster to use
government-owned transmitters.
‘‘There is chronic misuse and underuse of resources in this medium,
which I consider it the best way to reach those people who are not
targeted by advertisers —— the same ones that the Common Minimum
Programme rightly seeks to shift the attention to,” he said.
(Indian Express, 21 July'2004)
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