Gone are the days when my freedom ended where your nose began. The classical debate between a person’s right to privacy and another’s freedom of expression was originally in the context of celebrities and hawkish media. But over the years issues of intrusion into privacy vs. freedom of speech have evolved with the rising reach and changing character of media and has also taken many social, political and legal hues. Today, not just celebrities and media, but also every individual or group is a party on either side of the fence and also actually exchange places whenever self-interest dictates. The hypocritical position, as with all things human, is ‘it’s different when it comes to me’!
Freedom of speech, reasonable restrictions and intellectual property protection are all raging issues this week. Free speech champions are up in arms against the denial, at the behest of some free radical Islamists, of entry to writer Salman Rushdie at the Jaipur Literary Fest. Google, Facebook, Microsoft and a host of social network sites are in the legal docks in Delhi’s courts for displaying ‘objectionable content’. The whole web world is on protest mode currently, with Wikipedia even shutting down for a day, against two US laws drafted to prevent copyright violation and which the tech giants claim would hit at their very existence. Of course, we have the familiar censorships, bans, book-burnings, scurrilous content, defamation suits, all of which have coincidentally heightened the action.
There has been a quantum jump in the presence of offensive content in the public sphere owing to the expansion, nay, explosion of media options. But that said, with a parallel jump in access to and avenues for expression, anyone can take offence at anything too. Writers and public speakers are capable of unwarranted provocations while inflammable ‘targets’ are ever on the hunt for an opportunity to ignite. Clearly, slander, in all its shades from the innocuous and innocent comment to the intentionally malignant jab, has become standard tender in public communication. Not a word can be said or written that does not raise the hackles of someone. On the other side, rising touchiness and intolerance and falling sportive spirit also ensure that every word is sifted and studied to pick on a possible offence. Add the fuel of politics, as in Rushdie’s case, and even a fire that died two decades back can be reignited!
The traditional media, newspapers and TV, despite all their pretensions of professional ethics, thrive on sensation and with an eye always on survival. There is a limit to self-incrimination and so suffice to say that objectivity and press freedom are not unshakeable absolutes: The fine print in the media Balance Sheet talks louder than the bold headline. Still there are some residual non-monetary virtues and compulsions. In media, as in life, on any given issue there can be a thousand debates but only one opinion or stand. There is no middle path even for a meddlesome media and therefore any editorial opinion or column automatically invites accusations of bias from the aggrieved. Equally challenging is the question of privacy of public persons. There is no way by which a corrupt person can be separated from his corrupt act so as to honour ‘his privacy’! For instance, you can never say ‘The telecom minister ripped off Rs 1.76 lakh crs’. You can only write that, ‘A.R, the telecom minister, ripped off Rs 1.76 lakh crs’. The person and his private dealings are the crux.
But such nit-picking is passé. The media today is no longer the holy cow but a raging bull in the info business. While news and views got merged long back, even the prerogative to purvey that dubious mixture as also to sensationalise or scandalise with impunity has clearly slipped from the grasp of the traditional media. Ivory tower journos have been left high, dry and lonely while the rest of the world has shifted underneath. For instance, like it or leave it, free press today means free content and a free-for-all media milieu. The point is while the historic media has its secure niches, it is no longer the master of all it surveys or purveys. This sudden, tectonic upheaval has been caused by the social media revolution of the last few years. The key fallout of this is that almost all consumers of media have turned producers of news, views and opinions and in words, pictures and graphics, all in quick time and great detail. This passing of the baton is most aptly reflected in the many columns in newspapers and magazines that feature, ‘the best of tweets’ or ‘today in FB’ etc. Take away search engines and you will leave many journalistic passengers stranded!
But such facts do not make for favourable developments. The web, particularly in its avatar as a social media, is a multi-headed, multi-fangled, multi-armed and multi-tongued monster that defies taming. For one, there is no way to fix responsibility on the web; it is a reckless realm in which someone can make up some mud, pack the muck, mar a reputation and then merge into oblivion without leaving a footprint. Even a Google or a Facebook or a Wikipedia, that owns the content and is,
therefore, legally accountable for it, actually do not have much control over what is happening in their own domain. For instance, FB founder Mark Zuckerburg himself can be a target of ridicule or slander in his own site, making it a virtual Bhasmasura. There can only be damage control which is post facto. This is precisely their defence in the Delhi courts. But that does not exonerate them because much can happen in those few hours of redressal. Indeed with callousness and disregard for intellectual property, and individual privacy being the essential nature of the media itself, blocking them out looks to be the only option. In which case, the world would burn!
Getting back to basics, it is no longer an issue of my freedom ending at the start of your nose. This is a world full of nosey neighbours and nasty netizens, all of whom have no regard whatsoever either for compound walls or firewalls. In a milieu where the colour of an undergarment is breaking news on FB (with or without visuals) and your dog wagging its tail at the bitch next door merits a two-line tweet, privacy and profundity are pathetic jokes. In fact, in a pervert way, privacy meets with its arch enemy, freedom of expression here: Intimate personal info is voluntarily put out under the right to free expression! Talk of cutting one’s own nose to spite on Facebook!
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