By IANS
New Delhi : Faced with mounting criticism of the Broadcasting Bill and the proposed content code, Information and Broadcasting Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi Wednesday said one more meeting will be held with stakeholders in the electronic media before presenting the bill in the monsoon session of parliament.
Defending the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 2007, Dasmunsi said that the government had every intention of introducing the bill as soon as possible since it was the most democratic legislation in the entire world as far as the electronic media is concerned.
The minister, however, did not disclose when the meeting with the stakeholders will be held. The meeting, according to well-placed sources, is likely to be held either Thursday or Friday.
He was speaking on the sidelines of a function held to release a report by the Lokmat media group entitled ‘Taking the UPA Report Card to the Masses’.
The minister also stressed that the government was trying to create a democratic and impartial debate over the Content Code by placing the code and the bill on the information and broadcasting ministry’s website www.mib.nic.in.
The ministry has sought reaction to the code and the bill by Aug 5.
The “trust deficit” between private broadcasters and the government over the content code is, however, widening.
Private broadcasters have been near unanimous in rejecting the content code, which they see as an attempt to fetter the autonomy of media, and have instead pressed for self-regulation.
Some stakeholders have also called for a re-look at cross-media restrictions.
Recently, Asha Swarup, secretary in the information and broadcasting ministry, also defended the content code, saying it was “incorrect” to say that India was not the only country that was proposing to have such a code for the broadcast sector as codes exist already in different forms in other countries.