The renowned journalist and author Sir Harold Evans has said that the concept of foreign ownership of newspapers and television channels in a complex society such as India cannot work. This is not desirable in Indian society. While delivering speech at 4th K C Mammen Mappillai Memorial Lecture, Evans said the ownership of media by different companies had yet to prove a blessing to journalism anywhere across the world.

Evans is a former editor of The Sunday Times of London for 14 years from 1967 to 1981. When Rupert Murdoch took over The Sunday Times in 1981, Evans shifted to The Times but resigned in just one year because of policy differences with management.

Evans said:

I do not want to sound chauvinistic. There should be no custom barrier in the flow of ideas and information. But I would prefer to suggest newspapers and broadcasting media working in complex, sensitive societies such as India that it may not work under foreign ownership that is not aware of the tradition and intricacies in these countries. The foreign companies see culture and society as a marketplace.

He said that media conglomerates do not like the risk factor, expense and dispute that may rise in investigative journalism. The investigation of corruption and violence are the riskiest jobs. It may lead to loss of advertising revenues, disservice with the people sitting in high positions or with associated businesses.

He further said that most of the best newspapers in the world were not owned or controlled by conglomerates. Families who regard the firm as public trust mostly managed them.

He attacked today’s face of journalism and said that if today’s media houses showed and published the hideous videos of beheading jihadists, they actually did exactly the killers wish. The media houses are creating terror by becoming a tool of terror these days.

He asked:

Are you exposing the jaws of the beast? Are you exercising freedom or are you indulging in the pornography of violence?

Evans, who was voted by British journalists as the best newspaper editor of all times, suggested journalists to implement self-discipline and recognise the limits while reporting in conflict situations. According to him, the freedom of the press is a moral concept or it is nothing.