ANI’s de facto monopoly is both constitutionally impermissible and dangerous to democracy

VIDEOS FROM THE RECENT ALL PARTY DELEGATION to different countries on the India-Pakistan conflict had one thing in common - Asian News Agency’s (‘ANI’) logo. So a question naturally arises – can one news agency (ANI), which is a private company (unlike some others such as Press Trust of India (‘PTI’), which is a Trust), exercise a de facto monopoly in covering government related official news? 

Why were the other news agencies such as PTI, Indo-Asian News Service (‘IANS’), Press Information Bureau (‘PIB’), or United News India (‘UNI’)absent from the whole scene? Were they not invited by the Government of India to go with the official delegation? Or were they invited but asked to pay for themselves but they simply did not have the funds to cover the same? 

Further, if the Government of India did not ‘invite’ anyone, and ANI went on its own, just because it had the ‘resources’ to do so, is it okay to allow one agency to disrupt the level playing field? 

Most importantly, why is the state owned public broadcaster – Doordarshan, which is funded by public money, being ignored? Surely, the Indian government can at least fund a team of journalists to accompany the official delegation? 

These questions are not limited to the coverage of the recent official all party delegation. They are fundamental to understanding the undue advantage that ANI seems to be getting, at the cost of all others. 

In essence the problem is this - having just one news agency, exclusively covering all or any government related official event/stance is both constitutionally impermissible and dangerous to democracy. 

This ‘exclusivity’ may not arise from any obvious contract between the Government of India and ANI, but the government doing nothing to promote a level playing field, to broadcast ‘official government related functions’ is akin to giving rise to an effective monopoly albeit indirectly. 

ANI works for ‘profit’, and sells the information forward to other news agencies, media, users etc. for a ‘fee’. So unlike PIB, or Doordarshan it is not government owned. ANI will and does claim ‘ownership’ over its content, thereby giving rise to copyright challenges for any of its content by the users and rightfully so.

But when the information in question is  ‘official government event/stance’, what is at stake is people’s right to know about their own government and its activities. 

Now, ANI does have more resources, and thereby competency to be present where none are. So there should be fair play and the advantage that comes from being an effective competitor in a free democracy. But, can this be extended to all types of information, including government related broadcasts? 

For example,  JioCinema does have specific digital rights to cover India-England test series, but Sony retains the television broadcast rights for the same. The Board of Control for Cricket in India enters into match specific agreements with different broadcasters.