By Sanjay Pinto
Press Council Chairman Justice Katju quit twitter in five days. The
experience and feedback from many quarters was probably what egged him on to
recently recommend some form of regulation of the ‘Rules Of Discourse’ in the
social media. That was enough to open the floodgates of vitriol. Why do
we need to follow the George Bush dictum of the Gulf War vintage: ‘You are
either with us or against us.”? If what Justice Katju has in mind is not
blocking fair comment but filtering vulgar, inflammatory and defamatory
content, how can anyone have a problem with that? A disturbing fact is that if
you say something remotely critical of the social media, you inevitably subject
yourself to scorn and abusive tweets, blogs and posts. The public resentment of
the ‘system’, of politicians and of the mainstream media too may have
contributed to this ‘touch me not’ syndrome . Or as a tweet put it, this is the
new ‘Janata Ki Adalat’.
It takes all kinds to make the social media. There are scores of unsung
heroes on twitter. Take for instance, this group ‘@BloodAid’. It’s an
initiative to bridge the gap between blood donors and patients in need. The
facebook pages of Alex Paul Menon, the abducted Sukma Collector and that
of his wife Asha Alex, have been overflowing with messages of support,
prayers, sharing of numbers, pictures, links and condemnation of the act, from
the minute the news broke. Thank God his wall didn’t disallow posts, which is a
privacy option. Today, the fastest way to confirm news is through the social
media. Earlier this month, the tremors and the tsunami scare played itself out
on twitter and facebook. With mobile networks jammed, these updates were
the saving grace.
No one should be allowed to police free speech and thought. Sufficient
leeway for criticism, humour, disagreement and rebuttal is essential. But hold
on. Just recently, an actor while engaging in an innocuous discussion on the
Shah Rukh Khan detention in the US, had a nasty reply popping up: “You want
actors to be worshipped in the US the way they are in India? They are no more
than prostitutes.” This isn’t banter that you can shrug off. Neither is it a
wisecrack like a post I came across on facebook: “bird brains tweet the most.”!
This is the difference between facebook and twitter. On the latter, strangers
can usually invite themselves to someone’s party and vitiate it. You can chose
to confirm those who follow you on twitter but that’s an option few exercise. I
was horrified to see uncharitable comments on the religion of the abducted
Collector. And in response to a clever message on Easter “You can put truth in
a grave; but it won’t stay there”, there were sarcastic comments on the
resurrection. Can any right thinking person hold a brief for such tweets?
Invariably they emanate from those who hide behind vague profiles. You need to
be at the receiving end of vilification to appreciate the need for some control
of what has become a behemoth.
It’s easy to say, ‘file cases if content is offensive’. How? It’s not as
if the hate comment comes with a full postal address! The service providers are
sitting in a foreign land and establishing identity of an offender is a
challenge.
It’s not the genuine users but mischief mongers who need to worry about
reasonable restrictions. Films have a Censor Board. Television needs an uplink
licence and is governed by the Cable TV Act, apart from being subject to the
laws of the land and self regulatory bodies like the National Broadcasters
Association. Today, when you post video links on the social media, you become a
sort of broadcaster yourself. It’s an extension of citizen journalism and I
welcome it. But the danger of such tools, when unregulated, falling into the
wrong hands, is too serious to be ignored.
To those who are already itching to throw their hat into the regulation
ring, it’s worth recalling a quote attributed to Voltaire: “I may disagree with
what you say but I will defend to death your right to say it”. But there is a
difference between dissent and abuse. All the stake holders must realise
that ‘be you ever so social, the law is above you.’
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