Meeting of Consultative Committee of Information & Broadcasting

Minister for Information & Broadcasting, Shri Manish Tewari today chaired the meeting of the Consultative Committee of the Ministry. The meeting discussed the activities related to Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) and the members were given a presentation of the Leveson Report and its relevance and implications in the Indian context.

Welcoming the members, Shri Manish Tewari mentioned that the IIMC was in the process of drawing a roadmap whereby quality education could be provided in the field of mass communication in view of the changes taking place in all forms of media landscape today. Shri Tewari highlighted the recent initiatives in the context of opening of the Regional Centres, upgradation of facilities in the existing centres and the proposal of the Government to declare IIMC as an institution of National importance through an Act of Parliament. The Minister also highlighted the steps taken by the institute to upgrade its capacity in the domain of research and evaluation, training and capacity building.

DG: IIMC made a presentation before the members highlighting the vision and mission statement of the institute, the structure of the institute including its regional centres and steps being taken to improve the institutional structure of the institute.

Members of the Committee while appreciating the steps taken by the institute to introduce a new course in Urdu Journalism also gave suggestions for improvement in the proposed course including enhancing the duration of the course, content and language to be used in the course content. Members also emphasized the need for cultivating courses in  regional languages at the various regional centres. This initiative would enable the centres to augment the growth of language journalism across the country. Members emphasized that the course content should include sections from the freedom movement, culture, practice of ethics in Journalism. Members also emphasized on the need to introduce new courses for both print and electronic media in the areas of management, financial management, technology, business management in the media industry. Members also emphasized on the need to create more regional centres across the country and called upon the Ministry to allocate higher resources. Members were also of  the view that efforts should be made to ensure that the students passing out of IIMC were appropriately absorbed. Suggestions were also made to explore the possibility of absorption within Prasar Bharti. 

The members were also given a presentation on the broad features and highlights of the Leveson Committee Report which dealt with “Culture, Practice, and Ethics of the British Press”. The presentation also highlighted the implications of the report in the Indian Context.

The members who attended the meeting included Dr. Anup Kumar Saha, Shri Ramashankar Rajbhar, Dr. Sanjay Jaiswal, Shri Shatrughan Sinha, Shri Ahmad Saeed Malihabadi, Dr. Barun Mukherji, Shri Bharat Kumar Raut, Shri M.P. Achuthan, Shri Mohammed Adeeb and Shri Pyarimohan Mohapatra.