It is a good time as any to talk about free press in India. For the last ten days, protests have erupted around the world over an anti-Islam film.  The Jammu and Kashmir government responded by blocking Youtube and Facebook last Friday to prevent violence. In the last six months, political cartoons have sent two people to jail. Cartoonist Aseem Trivedi’s representation of a national symbol earned him an arrest warrant for sedition. Jadavpur University’s professor Ambikesh Mahapatra found himself behind bars earlier this April for sharing a cartoon about Mamata Bannerjee via email.

As I read these reports online and opinions about increasing intolerance with regard to free speech, I couldn’t help but feel relieved that at least I was reading them. Print, television, the internet, still has space to agree, dissent, express outrage and if we read across mediums and competing voices, it isn’t hard to make an informed opinion. But what if these voices were quelled and we were never told about seditious cartoonists and insensitive films?  Or all we heard was a homogenous voice that subscribed to one opinion and only had one story to tell?

At present, this seems improbable. We pride ourselves on the fourth pillar of democracy. A transparent media that keeps its journalists on their toes, citizens informed and elected representatives attentive. However, an increasing threat to a free media comes not from the government but perhaps from within the ranks itself. Rising concentration of media voices could make self-censorship and gate-keeping plausible and convert a transparent press into an invisible one.

Most developed and developing countries such as USA, UK, Australia, Canada and South Africa have regulations to prevent media cartels from forming, through Cross Media Ownership Laws. Cross media ownership is characterised as an organisation or individual owning more than one branch or segment of the media, such as an organisation owning a print and/or television and/or radio broadcasting company.

India has maintained a prolonged silence on this issue. Take for example what happened in June this year (or rather, what didn’t happen until June this year). A report by the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) titled ‘A study on Cross Media Ownership in India’, showed up on the Information and Broadcast Ministry’s website for review by media organisations, NGOs, Civil Society Organisations and individuals, three years after it was prepared – in 2009. The report recorded an increasing concentration of media ownership and few organisations holding a large segment of the viewership/readership pie. It called on the need for cross-media regulations and a regulatory body in India.

In contrast, in the same year, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) came up with a set of recommendations on cross-media ownership that concluded “that no restriction should be imposed on cross control/ownership across telecom and media sectors, at this point of time. The issue could be reviewed after two years.” It also said, “that the current restrictions on number of licenses held by a single entity… are adequate for the time being.”

Do we really need a regulatory body in India? Can’t market competition ensure plurality of voices? Media organisations owned by corporations do not necessarily make them corporate mouthpieces. However, according to Vanita Kohli-Khandekar, in this Business Standard article, large corporations are not investing in the media market because it is profitable. She proposes two reasons for their interest, because they could wield influence and they want to learn the media business.

Under this light, let’s examine one of the biggest media acquisitions in India. In January, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) bought 11 crore Network18 Media and Investments share. This helped Network 18 write off its debt and acquire the Eeanadu Group’s regional channels. According to The Mint’s report In January, these ETV channels acquired by Network 18 belonged to RIL, that had invested Rs 2,600 crore in the Eenadu Group.

What has RIL gained out of this acquisition?

In addition to their previously owned stake in Eeanadu that includes:

• 100% economic interest in five regional news channels—ETV Uttar Pradesh, ETV Madhya Pradesh, ETV Rajasthan, ETV Bihar and ETV Urdu
• 100% economic interest in entertainments channels ETV Marathi, ETV Kannada, ETV Bangla, ETV Gujarati and ETV Oriya
• 49% economic interest in ETV Telugu and ETV Telugu News

Reliance now has a say in Network18 and the Network’s subsidiary TV18 that includes:

• Television: CNBC-TV18, CNBC Awaaz, CNBC-TV18 Prime HD, CNN-IBN, IBN7 and IBN-Lokmat (News)  and Colors, MTV, Comedy Central, VH1 and Nick – and Viacom18 Motion Pictures (Entertainment)
• Internet: moneycontrol.com, ibnlive.com, in.com and firstpost.com
• Print: Forbes India

That’s not all. According to Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, in The Hoot

“(But) what is arguably the most significant aspect of this strategic association that has been structured in a complicated manner is disarmingly simple: RIL, which is currently setting up an all-India broadband telecommunications network, will get preferential access to the content as well as the distribution assets of the two media groups.”

The RIL-Network18 agreement is not the only corporate-media deal in India this year – Sony, Essel Group, Aditya Birla Group and Sahara Group have also ventured into the market.  Read more on India’s consolidating media market here.

Keeping in mind the dynamic, consolidating market, the ASCI report has made two suggestions (as mentioned before):

The first is to extend TRAI’s current jurisdiction from telecommunications broadcasting and cable television to print media, which would bring the gamut of media sectors under one regulator. Currently, TRAI cannot regulate the print media, which comes under the Press Council of India. Alternatively, the report suggests setting up a Broadcasting Regulatory Authority that would set limits for cross-regulation.

For either of these recommendations to be considered, political will and support from the media will be imperative to expedite rules. A regulatory body will have to balance between being zealously stringent (as that would take the bite out of the press) and politically or economically dependent on the media (as that would hinder setting down transparent, competitive laws). Regulation that clamps down on consolidation but does not protect media plurality would only result in the opposite of the intended consequence — fewer avenues for transparent reporting.