Dismembering media diversity: A tryst with two press commissions. (May 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Parthasarathi, Vibodh
• Is Part Of: Media, culture, and society. Volume 43:Number 4(2021)
• Page Start: 764
• Page End: 775
• Publication Date: 2021-05
• Subjects: media diversity -- media modernity -- media policy -- news regulation -- subdominant press -- India; Mass media and culture -- Periodicals; Mass media -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Wireless communication systems -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 302.2305
• DOI: 10.1177/0163443721994552
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0163-4437

Abstract

How does the governance of the newspaper business in mid-20th century India enrich our understanding of contests over media diversity? This essay examines the anxieties of media diversity in regulatory debates in India during the decades between the two Press Commissions of 1954 and 1982. I argue the contests spawned during these debates being driven as much by normative standpoints on the press as a modern institution as by enumerations of the actual dynamics in the newspaper business. My purpose is twofold: to highlight the anxieties about media diversity expressed by both press commissions and related policy debates in the interim; and to reveal the desires to mitigate the risks to media diversity being undermined by mobilising unqualified notions of media freedom.