The Minister for Finance, Corporate Affairs and Information & Broadcasting, Arun Jaitley has said that in the last two decades, the conventional contours of the issues pertaining to freedom and responsibility of media had changed due to changes in the nature and content of media and the definition of news. News in the electronic media today was being defined by what the camera could capture.

In the current paradigm, technology had become a driving force for these changes. The impact of technology was profound as information dissemination was taking place 24x7 across different technological tools and media platforms including the digital space.

Jaitley stated this while delivering the first Justice J. S. Verma Memorial lecture on the 'Freedom & Responsibility of Media' organized by the News Broadcasters Association here.

Elaborating further, Jaitley said technological developments had defied the contours of censorship and the challenges for the media lay within, in the context of ownership patterns, financial sustainability and financial models which led to aberrations such as paid news.

The minister further stated that the challenges before media was to ensure quality, credibility along with the responsibility to play the role of an Educator in handling sensitive issues. The challenge also lay in maintaining high ethical standards on the issue of conflict of interest where media needed to be very careful. Regarding digital media, the minister said the financial models would evolve as the medium matured. The digital platform also needed to evolve its own standards of responsibility as it had emerged as an alternative platform for information dissemination.