While throwing light on reporting incidents of the news channels, the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Monday warned the private satellite channels against compromising on ‘good taste and decency while covering incidents of accidents, deaths, and violence including death, in conformity with the Programme Code.
“This Ministry has time and again issued advisory to Private Satellite Te1ex’ision channels for adhering to the Programme Code laid down under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1’995. The Ministry has observed that over the last few months, several television channels including the mainstream channels have reported incidents of accidents, deaths, and violence including violence against women, children and elderly in manners which grossly compromised on “good taste and decency”, and were quite unpalatable to the eyes and ears of a common viewer. Television, being a platform usually watched by families in households with people from all cohorts — old aged, middle-aged. children, etc., and with various socio-economic backgrounds, place certain sense of responsibility and discipline among the broadcasters, which have been enshrined in the Programme Code and the Advertising Code laid down under the said Act,” read the advisory.
“However, notwithstanding the spirit behind these Codes, television channels have shown dead bodies of individuals and images/videos of injured persons with blood splattered around, people, including women, children and elderly being beaten mercilessly in close shots, continuous cries and shrieks of a child being beaten by a teacher, shown repeatedly over several minutes including circling the actions thereby making it even more ghastly, without taking the precaution of’ blurring the images or showing them from long shots. The manner of reporting such incidents is distasteful, heart wrenching, distressful, indignifying, sensational, thereby offending good taste and decency. Such reporting also have an adverse psychological impact on the children. There is also a crucial issue of invasion of privacy which could be potentially maligning and defamatory. In most of these cases, it was also observed that these video clips, etc., have been taken by the broadcasters from social media and little effort has been made to modulate or attune or edit such clips so as to make it compliant and consistent with the spirit of the Programme Code.”
It further added , “such telecast by the television channels is a matter of grave concern and in view of the larger public interest involved and having regard to the nature of audience of television channels including elderly, women and children, all private television channels are strongly advised to attune their systems and practices of reporting incidents of crime, accidents and violence, including death in conformity with the Programme Code, including the following: –
- Offends against good taste or decency
- Contains anything obscene, defamatory, deliberate, false and suggestive innuendos and half truths
- Criticize, malign or slander an individual in person or certain groups, segments of social, public and moral of the country.
