New Delhi, 08.10.2011 : The Broadcast Editors’ Association (BEA) strongly criticized the move of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to the effect that renewal of permission would be considered subject to the condition that “the channel should not have been found guilty of violating the terms and conditions of the programme code on five occasions or more”.
The BEA has said that across all democratic nations, governments have no role in issues pertaining to content. The Indian constitution clearly restricts the Government from assuming any such role, the BEA said. With new norms, government is trying to control an otherwise independent electronic media by sending a subtle message that their permission to uplink can be withdrawn should they not ‘behave’.
“Can content be left to the wisdom of the bureaucrats in a democracy,” the BEA asked.
The net result of the new norms would be that an officer of the Government can question an individual channel on content for four times on one pretext or the other, and finally, threaten that channel of non-renewal, should it not fall in line The BEA said, this move is an attempt to undermine the landmark steps that electronic media has taken towards self-regulation. The BEA demands that proposed norms be immediately withdrawn otherwise media will be forced to take up this issue on other forums.
Shazi Zaman
President
NK Singh
General Secretary
Broadcast Editors’ Association (BEA)
Akela Manav
October 8, 2011 at 7:13 pm
Dear Shazi Zaman and rest of your team, very well said and fantastic point of argument!… Have you people ever seen the Split Ville, Swarg Ki Sirhi (on IBN 7 by very dynamic and revolutionary Rajdeep Sardesai and Ashutoshji Maharaj!), Lal Kitab propaganda advertorial program on your own channel, lots of other superstitious, degraded, vulgar, downmarket (so called popular verse) almost ugly programs, Emotional Atyachar king of contents and many more these kind of uncoutable stories?… Then you people always kept mum and acting like a pantomime characters!… Then the nation was moving well under your wish, control and desired momentum!… But when Govt has now, at least, tried to curb/control the unwanted flow of the contents then suddenly you people have become conscious to safeguard of the constitutional frameworks and rights?… Isn’t it Mr Zaman, Mr Singh and so on?… You people know very well that how effective is your Self guided content control mechanism?… Now, it’s a good move to control the so called TRP gimmick being hyped by your kind of incompetent editors and associations as well!…