3 highlights
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In a cow worshipping country, the democratic high priests have a herd of their own to boast of and protect. It has holiness bestowed on some of its entitlements. Freedom of the Press (or simply a free media), which is an inferred right under The Right to Expression enshrined in Article 19 (1)(a), is one of them.
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The myth of self-regulation stands exposed in times when market forces drive the core of media operations, and ‘commerce of information and views’ was hardly the thing which Article 19 sought to protect.
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Self-regulation became an idea whose time never came in the Indian media sphere. At the same time, the State can never be an arbiter in the entrenched non-negotiables of liberal and democratic society. That’s a given and constitutionally incontrovertible. But the market forces have warped the zone of entitlements and the stark question is: who will straighten the crooked timbre? Who needs to bark at the watchdogs of democracy?