Volume 15, No 2, 2018
Legislation And Judicial Precedent In India Pertaining To Communication Technology's Advancement In Mass Media: An Analysis
Surender Kumar
Abstract
Mass Media systems of the world vary from each other according to the economy, polity, religion and culture of different societies. In societies, which followed communism and totalitarianism, like the former USSR and China, there were limitations of what the media could say about the government. Almost everything that was said against the State was censored for fear of revolutions. Shifting our view to the Indian perspective and its system of Parliamentary Democracy, it is true that, the Press is free but subject to certain reasonable restrictions imposed by the Constitution of India, 1950. Before the impact of globalisation was felt, the mass media was wholly controlled by the government, which let the media project only what the government wanted the public to see and in a way in which it wanted the public to see it. However, with the onset of globalisation and privatisation, the situation has undergone a humongous change. Before the invention of communication satellites, communication was mainly in the form of national media. Then came 'transnational media' with the progress of communication technologies like Satellite delivery and ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), the outcome: local TV, global films and global information systems. In such an era of media upsurge, it becomes an absolute necessity to impose certain legal checks and bounds on transmission and communication. In the due course of this article, we would discuss the various aspects of media and the relevant legal checks and bounds governing them.
Pages: 178-184
Keywords: Freedom, Globalization, Privatization, Mass Media.