Even as the Ministry for Information and Broadcasting and the private television news broadcasters are involved in negotiations to have a mutually acceptable mechanism on content regulation,ASSOCHAM Tuesday asked the ministry to set up an independent regulator. In a note submitted to the I&B Ministry here,ASSOCHAM said "the need of the hour is an independent regulator,providing binding guidelines whereby the broadcaster is restrained from leading to any disaster through media such as coverage of 26/11 Mumbai terror attack where each broadcaster was trying to outperform the other for sensational breaking news clearly not respecting self-regulation". The industry body has underlined the need for re-drafting the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 2007,providing for co-regulation fully backed by a well-defined law. ASSOCHAM further said "it strongly believes that the setting up of a regulator through an Act of Parliament would have no bearing on the independence and autonomy of the said regulator. India has various instances where different regulators for different industries have been set up by various legislations passed by Parliament". The body of broadcasters,NBA,already has self-regulatory mechanism - News Broadcasting Standards (Disputes Redressal) Authority - having powers of taking punitive action against any channel (through imposition of fine and other means). "The authority seems to be a mere formality in regulating the media and imposes only small fine upon the defaulters. In today's time,such imposition of nominal fine barely regulates any broadcaster," ASSOCHAM said and asked the ministry to come up with a full-fledged independent regulator.
