CREATE SELF-CORRECTING MECHANISM TO CHECK PAID NEWS: PRESIDENT 

President Pranab Mukherjee stressed the need for the newspaper industry to have self-correcting mechanisms to check aberrations such as paid news. Expressing distress that some publications had resorted to this and other such marketing strategies to drive revenues, the President asked publications to resist a temptation to “dumb down” news and asked them to be not just effective raconteurs but visionary nation-builders.

President Mukherjee was speaking at the Platinum Jubilee of the Indian Newspaper Society here today. He reminded newspapers it was their responsibility to “ensure that ideas are debated dispassionately and thoughts articulated without fear or favour so that opinion is well informed.”

Extolling the role played by members of the Society, Mr. Mukherjee said, “Be it the ravages wrought by war or those inflicted by the man-made Bengal Famine, the trials and tribulations of a nation torn asunder by Partition or the building of modern day India, newspapers have played a crucial role in educating Indians and giving expression to the diversity of views in our society, upholding thereby the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression.”

Calling upon INS and its members to remain torch bearers of responsible journalism, the President said the conduct of the media should be above board. Ends and means are both important and the highest standards of ethics must be maintained at all times. Placing the onus for regulation on the INS, the President said, “It is incumbent upon you as a Society of newspapers and periodicals to weed out such aberrations as might have crept into the functioning of the media.”

The President honoured seven extant founder members of the Society by presenting commemorative plaques to their representatives. The newspapers so honoured were Bombay Chronicle, The Hindu, The Hindustan Times, The Pioneer, The Statesman, The Times of India and The Tribune.

In his speech, the President of the Indian Newspaper Society, Mr. Ravindra Kumar said that the platinum jubilee was being celebrated at a time the newspaper industry faced an existential crisis. “A recent judgment of the Supreme Court, upholding the validity of an Act that ought have been circumscribed or even repealed for its lack of relevance to 21st century threatens to drive many of us to closure,” he said.

Beneficial legislation that was aimed at being a sustainable model of wage determination had in the hands of authority empowered a prescription that was divorced from even the newspaper’s capacity to earn, he said.

Describing other challenges faced by newspapers, Mr. Kumar said these included the presence of other media, the occasionally intrusive policies of government, rising costs and “advertisement policies of the government that elevate to a fine art the subvention by newspapers of the state’s messages to citizens.”

Paid news strikes at the very roots of an independent Press just as unhealthy competition driven by a desire to consolidate media power assails the need to present a plurality of views, Mr. Kumar said. But the point to be noted, he maintained, was that the Society was mature enough to deal with these challenges, without needing the government to legislate or enact rules.