March 10, 2012

Obscenity can be found in every book except the telephone directory. – George Bernard Shaw.

Shaw perhaps did not anticipate telephone directories thriving on advertisements, often embellished with come-hither titillating dames. From there, hosting porn in mobiles to come alive at the press of a button is a long journey.

That takes us to porngate of Karnataka Assembly and the consequent resignation of three ministers. Laxman Savadi, C C Patil and J Krishna Palemar had to resign from the BJP government after television channels exposed them watching pornographic video clippings during the Assembly session on February 7. Subsequently a probe is on by a House committee set up by the Assembly Speaker. The committee has been boycotted by Congress and JD(S) nominees. It is now an exclusive BJP show and open to manipulation to save the accused ministers. So, the groundwork to sow the seeds of confusion and mischief is already on. One of the committee’s members, Nehru Olekar, has ominously said: ”The committee has got substantial evidence against 8-10 MLAs for having watched the clip. We have decided to issue notices to them”.

Such twists and turns are usual for the political class to wriggle out of tight situations and save skin of their kin. Remember “cash for votes” episode in Parliament? What has come of it despite House Committee and other probes? In this case also, some members of the committee have opposed extending the probe beyond the three on the ground that the scope of reference covered only the three and a fishing expedition beyond them is not warranted. So, now we will be witness to yet another controversy and in the process we will forget what the original quarrel was about.

While the chances of the three culprits being let scot-free are very high, the committee and the government are bent on shooting the messengers – those who exposed the episode by shooting the Assembly scene and broadcasting it. Already the fangs are out against the media. It essentially involves keeping the media out of the legislatures and government itself covering the proceedings through a captive TV and doling out (selective) feed to the electronic media. But, first a bit of background.

Carrying forward the move to exclude the media from legislative chambers, at a high-level meeting on February 28, attended by presiding officers of both Houses, Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda and senior officials of Doordarshan (DD) and the Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL), it was decided to look into the feasibility of launching a separate channel on the lines of Lok Sabha TV, a dedicated satellite channel that telecasts Parliamentary proceedings. The proceedings will be recorded and the clippings will be provided to DD for telecast. This means the footage will be edited, ensuring that no porngate-like embarrassments will happen. The meeting also discussed the possibility of entrusting to DD the responsibility of setting up the channel for which the BECIL has prepared Rs 17-crore plan.

According to Deccan Herald (28-2-12), the proposal to launch a dedicated channel to telecast the legislature session proceedings on the lines of Lok Sabha TV was once junked by the Assembly secretariat after finding it not feasible to implement. The proposal to start a dedicated channel was mooted in 2008 when Jagadish Shettar was the Speaker. Moreover, it was found that the infrastructure would remain unutilised for most part of the year as the Legislature session is held for an average of only 40 days in a year. As a result, the proposal was discarded.

However, in the wake of the media exposing three former ministers watching porn clips in the Assembly, the proposal has been revived. Once an alternative system is put in place, the private TV news channels will be barred from directly covering the proceedings. Instead, they will have to borrow clippings from the legislature secretariat.
 
Coming back to shooting the messenger, the House Committee has begun the proc. It has already grilled two representatives of the electonic media and the tone and tenor of the questions reflect the confrotationist and adversoraial stance of the political class.

The editor of a Kannada channel, who appeared before the committee on February 29, was asked questions that seemed to suggest that the media was wrong in telecasting the episode. “Don't you know that what you had done is a violation of Rules 6, 17 and 20 of the Karnataka Vidhana Soudha press gallery rules?” was one of the 15 questions posed to the editor. The questions ranged from “What is the purpose of your organisation when securing entrance into the Assembly?” to “Instead of recording the proceedings of the Assembly, your journalist forgot his primary duty and recorded indecent and unnecessary things on his camera. Is this correct? What was the intention behind this?” Among the other questions were: “Without the Speaker's permission, knowing that the visuals were unparliamentary, you have telecast it through the day. Is this right on your part?” and “Showing these kind of visuals could affect the viewers, so don't you think you are violating the constitutional provision of freedom of expression?”
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Knowing the government’s present stance, the Bangalore lawyers have also come out to shoot the messangers on the ground of biased coverage of their agitation in January 2012 and mounted an offensive on March 2 – to prevent the media from covering the court premises.

The Iraq war gave us the concept (and reality) of embedded journalism wherein US sponsored journalists marched with the invading forces and reported what they were told to report by the Army spokesman. Now we will have embedded (or hand-out?) journalism as far as coverage of State legislatures (and courts?) is concerned. Is it the thin adge of progressively curbing Press freedom?
 

John B Monteiro, author and journalist, is editor of his website www.welcometoreason.com (Interactive Cerebral Challenger) - with provision for instant response.