shri vinod sharma - Rajya Sabha

that the last two Sessions in particular, the Rajya Sabha Sessions, were covered
well, -- and we look forward to the views of our Deputy Chairman who would also
speak about this -- I am, rather, heartened. So, this tradition of newspapers of
record, of factuality and, to some extent, comprehensiveness, apparently survives
although I do not follow it on a day-to-day basis; I do not have the opportunity for
that. But, by and large, also, I think, relations are good with our Parliament. I
have not come across any case of intolerance of the kind we witnessed in some
States where, in the name of parliamentary privilege or contempt of legislative
privilege or contempt of the legislature, they have sent the police after journalists;
they have imprisoned a journalist, a friend of mine, for publishing a cartoon, an
editor, and so on. But these are aberrations; they happen; they bother us. But, at
the Central level, I think, relations are much more healthy and cooperative, it
appears. But we can't leave it to those informal things. I would seriously reiterate,
again, the need to codify legislative privilege and contempt not because any of us
here feels a threat from the people, in place, in Parliament, people in positions of
influence or authority, but because, institutionally, that has to be done. And our
legislators -- this, I think, we can say frankly -- have failed in their historic duty,
constitutional duty, of codifying their privileges, and if they do not do it, there will be
a suspicion that you are also like that Speaker of the Tamil Nadu Assembly after
"Sky High Powers", undefined powers. And this, I think, has to be done. It is
forgotten. That is why we have brought it back on the agenda.
The second thing is -- this is for the Media -- it is sensible to keep those
lines between reporting, i.e. factual reporting, news analysis and commentary. The
United Kingdom coverage of the House of Commons and, to some extent, the
House of Lords, I think, it is very worthwhile to study. I want to quote here from
an article, written in "The Guardian" of May 21, this year, by Shri Ian Aitken, about
this tradition, the change in the game of reporting, what the gallery correspondent