Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Manish Tewari has said the government will take media and advertising industry into confidence before formulating policies relating to the sector.

"It will be the endeavour of the government to take the industry (media and advertising) into confidence before we even take a single step towards taking any decision for the sector," Tiwari said at an IAA Leadership Award event late last evening.

He further said that there was a need to speed up the process of decision making.

"There are issues that are contentious and we have seen agitations either individually or collectively. As events of the past have demonstrated, if you delay decisions, if you delay resolutions, there will be a time when the situation will engulf you completely," he said.

Tiwari emphasised the need to create a statutory mechanism to address issues related to convergence across media, entertainment and telecom.

"Convergence across media, entertainment and telecom space, especially with digitisation kicking in, is inevitable. Therefore, at some point in time there will have to be an over-arching statutory architecture to look into the issues," he said.

He further said that it was responsibility of the stakeholders of the sector to respect the statutory regulations.

"Self-regulation of the content remains the preferred option, but it had to be broad based and balanced. Freedom of speech should not extend to the right to offend and individual's right to privacy must be respected. If an industry has done exceedingly well, then it's been the beneficiaries of liberalisation.

"But I think what also needs to be kept in mind is that the limit of statutory regulation should be respected, because only when we respect the law we maintain equilibrium and harmony between creativity, provocation and restraint. Then are we able to give the best and get the best," he said.