<> on Wed, 29 Apr 1998 21:27:01 +0200 (MET DST) |
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<nettime> From Asia |
ASIAN EXPERTS URGE TRANSPARENCY IN FUNCTIONING OF MEDIA BODIES NEW DELHI, April 27. UNITED NEWS OF INDIA Leading Asian mediapersons, newspaper proprietors, government officials and educationists have recommended enactment of legislation to ensure maximum transparency in the media to face challenges posed by "abuse of ownership and control". They observed that the move is imperative to ensure greater accountability of the media to the people and to guarantee the right to information to them. This is one of the several important recommendations made by them while participating in a three-day workshop on 'Media regulation for the New Times', organised by Asia's leading mass communication research organisation, the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC), in Bangkok-Thailand recently. The Press Council of India (PCI) chairman Justice P.B.Sawant, who presided over one of the sessions, emphasized that the arrival of newer services, including the Internet, and digital and interactive TV, had opened a wide debate on how the media should be regulated. He said participants felt that in view of increasing demand for the right to information in Asian countries, the media should be transparent and accessible for information. Experts acknowledged that the right to publish was an aspect of freedom of speech, and as such a fundamental right for every citizen. They recommended that given the public service nature of the press, efforts should be made to ensure effective representation of diverse sections of the community in the press and similar councils. Press councils and similar bodies should have sufficient powers and resources to enable efficient and and effective enforcement of their decisions, they remarked. A simple procedure of registration should be sufficient and self- regulatory mechanisms ought to be in place to deal with complaints against unfair practices in the press. "Where press and media laws inhibit and stifle this fundamental principle (right to information) these should be reviewed and liberalized to promote a free press," they recommended. Freedom of information should be made an essential aspect of the relationship between governments, media and the citizens. "New technologies, including the Internet, can allow public information to become more widely accessible and at a lower cost. Therefore, governments should desist from perceiving these technologies as a threat but treat them as powerful tools of good governance." The workshop noted that any attempt to devalue the independence and the role of the editor and the editorial staff, by any means, should be monitored and discouraged by the press council and other bodies. It suggested that monitoring of press coverage by media-watch groups was crucial to ensure fairness about patterns and priorities of such coverage and that efforts be made to encourage and promote grassroots and specialised journalism. On taking the media to the poor and the illiterate, the workshop called for initiating measures to expand audience choices, enhance open competition and transparency in the licensing process, strengthen professionalism and ethical standards in broadcasting and build a regional consensus on content regulation. It also recommended that governments should set up clear priorities in formulating an Internet policy, and that laws and policies should facilitate and encourage development of technology infrastructure related to the Internet. (*) --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl