Leading broadcaster NDTV on Monday (September 23) added an additional layer of ombudsman, complicating an already confusing regime on who a viewer can go to when a TV channel wrongs him or her.

In a statement quoted by Hindu Business Line, NDTV said jurist Soli Sorabjee will be its “ombudsman who will provide an independent perspective on its coverage and investigate viewers’ complaints”.

“Sorabjee in his honorary position will be entirely independent from NDTV and will investigate any complaints viewers may have about NDTV’s coverage,” the channel said.

“Yes he (Sorabjee) is doing this pro bono and yes he can censure via his findings. This is really about credibility,” Sonia Singh, NDTV’s managing editor, tweeted.

But the pursuit of ‘credibility’ has made life even more difficult for the Ordinary Joe. In fact, why a common man, let me make the point from the standpoint of a man with loads of authority.

Here’s how:

Just for assumption, what if you were Narendra Modi and NDTV called you names that you think you don’t deserve?

Theoretically, you – ie, NaMo – as the one wronged, have the choice of complaining to Manish Tewari, the licensor of all news and entertainment channels in the country.

Tewari, on his part, has an additional secretary (AS) in his ministry of information and broadcasting who chairs the ‘inter-ministerial committee (IMC)’ that is supposed to punish the channel. The AS can order a scroll of apology or even cessation of broadcasts for x/y/z number of days (as the IMC indeed did against a channel by the name of Live India some years back).

But hey, this is about NaMo, remember?

So, what’s Manish Tewari likely to do in real life? Well, considering the sensitivities involved, the minister might save the ‘IMC option’ for a more party-friendly complainant. My wager is that he’ll most likely send NaMo’s complaint to the news industry’s self-regulation body, called the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA). The underlying philosophy will be that the government comprises nice people who don’t want to be rapping the errant directly: instead, they prefer an essay in persuasion through a jury of peers.

So in comes the regime that the news TV industry has given unto itself via its trade union of CEOs, the News Broadcasters Association (NBA). The CEOs set up NBSA in October 2008.

Now, NBSA is supposed to be a jury of peers, who, when headed by a learned judge, is expected to look at the facts and then order an action ranging from an apology scroll on the renegade channel and/or a fine up to Rs 1 lakh (point for governor Raghuram Rajan: the figure has defied inflation since it was originally set in 2008! The general entertainment channels have given themselves a parallel regime where the fine is 20 times this amount).

The legwork involved

For the technically inclined, it must be mentioned that NBSA can also advice IMC to curtail a guilty channel’s broadcast licence, a role it inherited from a cabinet decision where it was enshrined that a relevant self-regulation body will be consulted when a channel’s licence is up for renewal.

So invoking NBSA and getting justice sound simple enough – after all, the august body has been headed by Justice JS Verma, a former chief justice of India who didn’t even charge any fee from the NBA, and now Justice RV Raveendran, a highly regarded supreme court judge. It also boasts of a peer group of the eminence of former chief election commissioner SY Quraishi, econocrat Nitin Desai, diplomat Leela Ponappa, and jurist G Mohan Gopal.

But look at the regulations carefully:

1.    Only the aggrieved can complain. So what if you are a prime ministerial candidate of the principal ruling party, as this hypothetical example entails.

2.    You, and you alone, should have first made your complaint to NDTV. That too “within a reasonable time period, from the date of broadcast (but) not exceeding seven days.”

3.    Your complaint to the channel couldn’t have been in a channel other than Hindi or English and (as per the channel’s website) addressed to one Mr Mankotia, a retired bureaucrat who now heads legal and corporate matters.

4.    As a complainant, you must wait for Mr Mankotia’s response for seven days before escalating the complaint before Justice Raveendran, what to speak of Mr Tewari’s IMC.

5.    If Mr Mankotia (and now, perhaps, Mr Sorabjee) responded, and you, NaMo, as per our example, still thought you have time and energy to persist, you’ll finally have the pleasure to knock at Justice Raveendran’s door, but within the expiry of 14 days since you received the channel’s reply. It won’t help you much that NBA is headed presently by NDTV. And the same individual, one Annie Joseph, doubles as principal executive to NBSA too.

Implicit, therefore, is that most senior people, what to speak of a busy chief minister, must be crazy to put in the time and effort entailed, only to get a scroll of apology or have the perverse delight that NDTV had to deposit a fine of Rs 1 lakh in the NBA coffers.

The other problem with an independent ombudsman of the eminence of Soli Sorabjee is when he may choose to absolve NDTV, and Justice Raveendran wonders how not to treat it as ‘legal opinion’ stated by a former attorney general. Worse still, what if Sorabjee censures or reprimands NDTV and the apology scroll has been dutifully carried, but Justice Raveendran wants a more incriminatory text to be carried and for longer duration and on prime time?

In a word, Monday’s political masterstroke is destined to be replicated by other news channels, with results that Manish Tewari would be watching with some interest!

(Disclaimer: This columnist served on the NBA board at the time NBSA was founded and is an independent director in an Essel Group company).