NEW DELHI: PrasarBharati chairperson A SuryaPrakash has said there is need to professionalize Doordarshan and All India Radio and establish a recruitment board to bring back viewers even as he defended RSS chief MohanBhagwat'sDussehra speech broadcast.

Prakash, who has previously held senior positions in various media organizations and authored books on media and democracy, was also a senior fellow with Vivekananda International Foundation before being appointed as Prasar Bharati Board chairperson recently. Speaking in the context of the clampdown on media during Emergency when "AIR and DD worked as wings of the government'', Prakash said, "The level of interference in what constitutes news has substantially declined and that is a very healthy thing for our democracy....(But) If you compare with private channels, if you see quality of output... there is a lot of work to be done.''

He added that there was a crying need to professionalize the body besides making it financially autonomous. "Autonomy for Prasar Bharati has several aspects. The government has to get down to doing this. What is in the Prasar Bharati Act must be implemented with respect to both financial autonomy and recruitment of employees,'' he said adding that the public broadcaster must seriously consider how to monetize its assets.

"Prasar Bharati has an annual budget of Rs 4,000 crore, 50% of it is underwritten by the Union government. About 70-80% of its employees are from the Central government and loaned to Prasar Bharati. What do we do? Prasar Bharati ought to have its own recruitment board. I feel we must all push for that,'' he said.

Defending coverage of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's Dussehra speech, Prakash said, "If I was heading a news channel, I would have gone live with this speech because that constitutes news that day. Today what the head of the Rashtriya Sayamsevak Sangh says is news. One has to understand that. That is why every news channel was going live with that, it is not peculiar to DD. We have to get to the point that editor makes a decision in the newsroom and my view is that we should not interfere with that gut assessment. That is the ideal newsroom situation- whether in Prasar Bharati or in any private channel. That is the ideal situation for which we must all strive. I was keen to know as a consumer what Mr Bhagwat had to say...so I was happy that the address was carried not just by DD but by so many channels.''