Mumbai: Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Manish Tewari has called for a robust self regulation regime for media organisations in the country.
"Content regulation in the media space is not going to come out of political executive, but will come out of the judicial process. Make self-regulation more inclusive and robust to keep out judicial intervention," he said while speaking at the Red Ink Awards function of the Press Club, Mumbai on Saturday evening.
"With exponential growth in the media space, a paradigm shift has taken place, wherein regulations have to keep pace with changing technologies and have to be universal," Tewari said.
He said there was a need for constant introspection so that the self regulation process could be taken forward.
Tewari said the social media has reshaped the media today and in effect, there are over eight crore broadcasters in the form of micro-bloggers, twitter and Facebook users.
Tewari also observed that the revenue models of Indian media organisations have not been well constructed, which in turn have led to the issues of paid news, private treaties, tyranny of TRPs and sensationalism.
Veteran journalist N Ram, participating in a panel discussion observed that reasonable restrictions were often becoming unreasonable restrictions and jurisdiction of criminal contempt was posing a serious challenge to fearless journalism.
Maharashtra Governor K Sankaranarayanan conferred the Red Ink Life Time Achievement Awards upon veteran journalists Kuldeep Nayyar and N Ram. The award for Kuldeep Nayyar was received by his wife Bharti Nayyar.
PTI
