Manish Tewari in favour of self regulation mechanism for media

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Manish Tewari on Tuesday said that the process of mainstreaming self regulation as a statutory mechanism ought to be led by the Industry rather than the Government.

Speaking at a panel discussion organised by the Observer Research Foundation, the Minister said that the Government's approach towards the media was an "Essay in Persuasion not Regulation".

The panel discussion "Media Regulation: Is status quo the option?", in which the Minister participated, heard him saying that the stakeholders within the industry would have to define the equilibrium levels so as to ensure that the paradigm of transparency, fairness, sobriety and avoidance of sensationalism becomes the key driver of the National discourse in the media space.

Tewari further said that digitization as a process could be leveraged to augment sample sizes by re-engineering every Set Top box to function as a virtual "People's Meter".

He also said that out of the box innovation and creative thinking by Media entrepreneurs could surmount the current challenges by a technological leap that could transform the dynamics at the back end of the Media Sector.

While emphasizing on the growing importance of the New Media space which had revolutionized the media landscape, Tewari said that the growth of the internet had led to a situation where there could be a conflict between the physical and virtual civilization.

He also added that it was important to comprehend the fact that the power of expression and dissemination through the internet had added a new dimension to innovations in information dissemination.

He further added that these developments could also lead to a situation where one could also face "Balkanization of the Internet" if agreed rules of international engagement did not emerge as a binding international compact that encompassed states and other entities who controlled the underlying hardware.

He said that this situation needed to be avoided at all costs so as to ensure that no artificial divisions are created in the World Wide Web (WWW) on ideological entities and Westphalian lines.