Journalists have the right to conceal and protect their sources in public interest but when it comes to national security, secrecy of sources cannot be of higher importance, Union Information & Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley said on Monday even as he maintained that the “age of bans” on the media is over and it is “literally impossible” to implement them.
Delivering the Sardar Patel lecture organised by All India Radio (AIR) here, Jaitley said a long-pending dispute or issue of debate is about the right of journalists regarding protecting their sources.
“I think the way courts world over have moved, is the correct direction. There is no fundamental right to conceal your sources but there is public interest which enables you to conceal your sources. And that public interest therefore will always have to be balanced with competing public interest,” he maintained.
He said that the print media and to a large extent electronic media adopt discretions in their content while social media completely lacks such a mechanism. “Many believe, and I am one of those who do believe, that the age of bans is now over. It is literally impossible if not very difficult to implement them,” he said. “Should the state step inIJ As far as possible, no,” he said.
Makers of the Constitution rightly held that Freedom of Speech and Expression is not absolute and subject to reasonable restrictions which were specifically defined, said Jaitley.
“In a society where because of multi-religious, multi-cultural reasons there are sensitivities, what do we do if somebody crosses the lakshman Rekha itselfIJ What would the Indian society have done if instead of the Danish cartoonist, it would have been an Indian cartoonistIJ
“And therefore we have criminal laws in provision but then in extreme cases, very reluctantly so, some power of restraint in larger interest so that it doesn’t disturb public order, and that is where those 1950s restrictions imposed in Article 19(2) itself will have an important role to play,” he said.
Jaitley said that in a changing media landscape, with the arrival of electronic media, news became more sensational. “News was what television cameras could capture. What cameras can’t capture won’t be news. A major Africa summit will be some news, but a young girl returning home from Pakistan would be big news because the television captures it differently,” he added.
Speaking about social media, he said while citizens have got a voice, it is an unregulated medium and there is also a large amount of false, defamatory and also damaging content. He said that in this situation, we have to rely on a sense of fairness of those who participate on social media.
The I&B Minister also touched on the issue of paid news in his speech and said that the question is whether commercial news also has free speech. If there has to be a penal provision against paid news, it will have to be tested on the touchstone of whether it violates free speech or not, he said.