The new draft placed by the ministry of information and broadcasting (MIB) in the public domain defines “paid news” and creates a press registrar-general (and an appellate commissariat) who can cancel a publication’s hitherto unequivocal right to continue printing, if it is found to have taken money in return for coverage.

“Paid news” has been defined as “publishing any news or analysis in the publication for a price in cash or kind as consideration”. I assume that with passage of time this will encompass both private equity and debt too.

Now, no one can argue on behalf of paid news. But proving that a politician or an industrialist paid a news organisation for coverage can’t be based on mere hearsay or the application of mind by the Press Council of India (PCI). Have a heart! The PCI is chaired by justice Markandey Katju – a man who exercises his right-to-free-speech rather abruptly: questioning the dim intellect of Indians one day, and that of editors who put Dev Anand’s death as front-page news!

Personalities apart – after all Katju will retire one day – we’ll still be left with the law, that has MIB hoping to be the defender of ethical journalism. 
This is amusing, to say the least, because Jawaharlal Nehru, while setting up PCI, was clear that it didn’t deserve the teeth of a shark. Nehru, the true democrat that he was, would rather have a ‘bad media’ than a ‘beholden media’.

This delicate arrangement is being undone by the blunt definition of “paid news” and giving PCI (and any other quasi-judicial/ judicial body) the power to suspend any publication gives the politicians of the day a weapon that can strike at the heart of dissenting media.

“The plain meaning of this sentence is that if someone pays newspapers money or some other form of inducement to publish ‘news’ (i.e., it is not specifically flagged as advertisement or sponsored content), the Press Council can suspend the publication after a hearing. By this definition, every newspaper owned by a political party or government should be banned – since the nexus is obvious. Doordarshan is owned and paid for by the government, and what it publishes is largely favourable to government. So is it paid news or not? And what about party papers? They publish nothing unfavourable to the parties that own them,” R Jagannathan has (in my opinion rightly) observed in Firstpost.

To this effect, the proposed law also mandates that publications declare advertisement revenues when asked to do so by the government. Now, if this isn’t news to you my dear reader, most media organisations are privately held. So, why, also, should they disclose their financial details?

I have been arguing that the bill, if it ultimately becomes an Act, will force media owners and editors to spend more time running around the press registrar-general, justifying their accounts rather than serving their principal mandate of keeping government and the political class in check.

The cancellation-of-licence provision makes it one of the most regressive onslaughts by the political class on freedoms of the press and rights of citizens to get information from whichever source they prefer.

Wouldn’t most of us rather trust our own collective intelligence in eschewing paid writing than going with a government-appointee?

Is the plan to grant broad powers to the government to shut down inconvenient publications? If not, we still have on our plate remedies that are worse than the disease they aim to cure.

It is instructive, therefore, that within three days of the draft PRBP bill being put up for comment, finance minister P Chidambaram speaking to CBI officers expounded on mens rea (state of mind). The FM bemoaned that there are a number of cases where investigating agencies like CBI, and other authorities like the CAG, “have overstepped their limits and attempted to convert bona fide executive decisions into either crimes or abuse of authority”.

“Ordinarily, a financial crime would arise from either unlawful gain or unlawful loss and, in such cases the law could either stipulate proof of the state of mind or presume a state of mind to cause the unlawful gain or the unlawful loss. So, in financial crimes, mens rea or the state of mind must be invariably proved or presumed from certain facts.”

“This,” in Chidambaram’s view, “is the correct approach to financial crimes.”

“There are cases where the CBI – and sometimes the courts – have interpreted provisions of law to exclude mens rea. A frequently cited example is section 13(1)(d)(iii) of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988. That provision reads as follows: ‘If he, while holding office as a public servant, obtains for any person any valuable thing or pecuniary advantage without any public interest…’

“A close reading of (even) the above provision does not,” in the FM’s view, “rule out mens rea.”

Chidambaram therefore argued that “the words ‘without public interest’ imply that the offender must have committed the act although he knew that there was no public interest. In a case arising under this section, if the accused is able to show that there was indeed some public interest, the offence would not be made out and the accused would be entitled to an acquittal.”

Shouldn’t the FM share this prudent approach to financial crimes with his colleague Manish Tewari, the minister piloting the new press law? Shouldn’t the test of mens rea (or state of mind) be applied on paid news?

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Killing Nehruvian balance?

The British left us with the Press and Registration of Books Act (PRB Act), 1867, aimed to create a system for keeping a record of publications through regulation of printing presses and newspapers. A number of minor amendments in the original Act were made to keep regulations in step with the evolution of business.

Claiming to make the 146-year-old PRB Act relevant in the present scenario of the print media (and books), the UPA government floated the Press and Registration of Books and Publication (PRBP) Bill 2011 – introduced in parliament on November 16, 2011. This was referred to the standing committee of information technology for examination, which submitted its report to on November 12.

The latest inserts, including giving the PCI (and others) power to kill a publication fly against Nehru’s idea while creating the PCI. The true democrat that he was, he would rather have a ‘bad media’ than a ‘beholden media.’

Revisions preferred by the government have been uploaded on the website of the ministry of information and broadcasting on November 8. Suggestions were expected over the next 10 days. The Foundation of Media Professionals (FMP), of which this columnist is a member, has requested for an extension of this deadline by two more months so that the implications are discussed threadbare.

Some ideas in essay have appeared earlier in The Pioneer)