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5 Police Stud.: Int'l Rev. Police Dev. 33 (1982-1983)
Police and the Media in India

handle is hein.journals/polic5 and id is 221 raw text is: Police and the Media in India K.S. Dhillon Bureau of Police Research and Development, New Delhi, India Abstract In India, as elsewhere, the police officer's need for confidentiality and the journalist's desire to inform the public often come into direct conflict. The author proposes a framework for discus- sion of relevant issues. Particular attention is paid to radio and film, media of special impor- tance in countries with low rates of literacy. Police-Media Relations Policemen are a part of, not apart from, the people. They are members of the public, spe- cially chosen and duly authorized to perform duties which belong to the public. What they do is done for and on behalf of the people, for the protection of society against deviance and disorder. The success of the police in the pur- suit of their objectives depends to a large ex- tent upon the quality and quantity of public support they may enlist for their plans and programs. The police-community relationship is, therefore, crucial to effective policing. The police-community relationship may be divided into three components, namely, service by the police to the community, people's par- ticipation in policing, and good public rela- tions. In a free democratic society, relations between the police and the community are greatly influenced by the mass media. There- fore, the mass media, comprising chiefly the press, films, radio and television, have an in- herent capacity to help or hinder police work in a significant measure, to the benefit or detri- ment of society. The performance of the media, so far as it relates to crime, violence, tragedy and accident, may also be affected in no small measure by the attitude of the police towards the media. Therefore, the relationship between the police and the media raises several issues of fundamental importance, not only from the viewpoint of the police alone but also from the broader perspective of the society at large. With the proliferation of the mass media and its ever-growing impact upon the people, and in view of the admittedly rising trends of violence and crime in large parts of the world, the relationship-equation has assumed added significance in the context of the conditions ob- taining in the present day society. The Media in India The following extract from the 23rd Annual Report of the Registrar of Newspapers in India will amply demonstrate the magnitude of growth of the print media even in a country with a relative low literacy percentage: With 15,814 newspapers published in 75 dif- ferent languages, the Indian press continued its growth in 1978 in variety, periodicity and contentwise. During the year under review, as many as 1,234 new newspapers commenced publication in various Indian and some for- eign languages. This was the second succes- sive year, which saw the launching of more than one thousand newspapers in the coun- try. Numerically, the growth rate in 1978 was 8.8 per cent, as against 9.1 per cent in 1977. The growth rate for the quinquennium ended 1978 was 25 per cent. The number of newspapers has more than doubled during the 25-year period ended 1978, registering a growth of 103 per cent. The total circulation of the Indian newspapers according to available data was 40,850,000 copies per publishing day in 1978 as com- pared to 37,437,000 copies in the previous year. The increase in 1978 was by 3,413,000 copies, or by 9.1 per cent. With 84 radio stations and 157 transmitters, radio is already the most prevalent source of information and entertainment for the far- flung and the remote rural audiences in every nook and corner of the country, and television is fast catching on. The Indian film industry is 33

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