The Press Council of India (PCI), is inviting applications for the 14th Council with an amended set of rules. Advertisements inviting claims have appeared in at least 18 newspapers across the country. The Press Council is a quasi-judicial body that comprises 28 members, and a chairman, usually a retired Supreme Court judge. The current chairman…
Tag Archives: Press Council of India
Who runs “PIB Fact Check”? What is their experience of journalism? Who has certified them as “fact-checkers”? 12 questions Indian news media should ask ‘Press Information Bureau’ as a new form of control and intimidation takes shape.
The outbreak of the #Coronavirus pandemic has seen a clear shift in media strategy of the Narendra Modi government. Suddenly, an image-conscious regime has spotted an opening to up the game and control independent news flow—and seized it. On the one hand, the prime minister, who has not held a press conference or met a…
Press Council chairman C.K. Prasad and ‘The Hindu’ chairman N. Ram get into a slanging match over PCI seemingly backing media curbs in Kashmir
The kerfuffle over the Press Council of India’s intervention in the Supreme Court on Kashmir Times Editor Anuradha Bhasin‘s petition seeking the lifting of curbs on the media in Kashmir refuses to die down. This, despite the PCI chairman Justice C.K. Prasad clarifying that far from backing the government, the Council was actually performing its…
Press Council chairman denies PCI is supporting the “abrogation of freedom of the Press [in Kashmir] by government”; says PCI does not approve of any action that restricts free flow of information
As criticism mounts over the decision of the media watchdog Press Council of India (PCI) to intervene in the Supreme Court in a petition filed by a Kashmir woman newspaper editor against the curbs on the media in the valley, the Council’s chairman contends it has neither argued for the curtailment of the freedom of the…
‘The Hindu’ tears into Press Council backing curbs on media in Kashmir; says claim of threat to integrity and sovereignty provides a “rationale for despotism”
The Hindu has an excellent editorial on the Press Council of India’s shameless abdication of its mandate by backing the Narendra Modi government’s patently undemocratic curbs on the media in Kashmir. The newspaper reminds the PCI that its stance is contrary to its support to the Punjab Press in its “efforts to inform the people…
Two members of Press Council, and two journalists’ unions, blast PCI’s decision to back Narendra Modi government’s curbs on media in Kashmir
Two serving members of the Press Council of India, and two media organisations, have opposed PCI’s “unilateral” decision to back the Narendra Modi government’s curbs on the media, by seeking to intervene in a petition before the Supreme Court. Press Council members Jaishankar Gupta and C.K. Nayak, who are office bearers with Press Association, have…
Full text of the 7-page application made by the Press Council of India, backing the Narendra Modi government’s curbs on the media in Kashmir, in the “interest of integrity and sovereignty”
India’s media bodies have spectacularly failed Kashmir’s media as they battle physical, professional, psychological and commercial challenges, following the blockade of land lines, mobile phones and the internet. The owners’ body Indian Newspaper Society (INS) has been deathly silent, even while full editions of newspapers cannot be reported, printed or distributed. The Editors Guild of…
The website of Kashmir’s widest read English daily ‘Greater Kashmir’ has not been updated for 18 days now—a window to the Valley for Kashmiris across the world is shut
Eighteen days after a total communications blackout preceded the “lockdown” in Kashmir, the Valley’s leading English language newspaper Greater Kashmir is gasping for breath. Thanks to the blockade of fixed lines, mobile phones and the internet, Greater Kashmir‘s website has not been updated for more than two weeks now, and the last available e-paper is…
For three days running, Kashmir’s newspapers have not been published. To no one’s surprise, neither the Press Council of India, nor the Indian Newspaper Society, nor the Editors Guild seem to be unduly bothered.
These are the front pages of four English language newspapers published from Srinagar, for Sunday, August 4, and Monday, August 5, 2019. The newspapers have not been published on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, following the clampdown on phone, internet, broadband, and cable TV services in the wake of India’s decision to strip the Valley of…
“ANI acted at the behest of [BJP] to manipulate quotes and defame our honourable intentions. Its conduct tantamounts to being perfidious”: military veterans’ complaint to Thomson Reuters, Press Council, Editors Guild on “motivated misreporting”
The video news agency ANI’s role in manufacturing consent for the Narendra Modi government has been blazingly obvious. Craven interviews with the prime minister; dubious tweets by its staffers; and a host of other incidents have turned ANI into a partisan and “pliable” purveyor at the forefront of the BJP propaganda machine. Barring a couple…
Pakistan does a surgical strike on media: brings print, electronic and internet-based media under one regulatory body, with the same laws applying to all
Pakistan has done what India has been threatening for a long time to do: merge its various media regulatory bodies into one outfit. Imran Khan‘s government has approved the formation of the Pakistan Media Regulatory Authority (PMRA) which will comprise the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) and the Press Council of Pakistan (PCP). Pakistan’s…
In the tragedy of errors that is Rafale and CBI, former Press Council chief Markandey Katju provides all the comedy, with 48 tweets in four days
A somewhat comical, even if self-serving, side play in the Narendra Modi government’s brazen (and thus far successful) attempts to fool the Supreme Court—not once, but twice—in #Rafale and #CBI, have been the interjections of Justice Markandey Katju*. Justice Katju has tweeted 48 times on or around the “transfer” of CBI director Alok Varma by…
When B.G. Verghese is drawn into row, it’s news
Nobody is safe in the treacherous minefield that is Jammu & Kashmir. Not even B.G. Verghese. The Magsaysay Award-winning editor of the Hindustan Times, who was sacked from the Birla-owned paper when he stated that Indira Gandhi‘s annexation of Sikkim was “less than proper” —and a welcome voice of sobriety in a mediascape populated by…
On National Press Day, a shop floor then & now
Today, November 16, is National Press Day. The photograph above, excerpted from Madras then, Chennai Now by Nanditha Krishna, Tishani Doshi and Pramod Kapoor (Roli books, 2013), is the floor of the composing room of The Hindu from the 1950s, a far cry from the ultra-modern printing towers of today. As the text accompanying the…
‘People know TV news is just entertainment’
Pratap Bhanu Mehta president of the Delhi-based thinktank, Centre for Policy Research (CPR), in an interview with Karan Thapar for CNN-IBN: Karan Thapar: How do you view the Indian media? Do you share justice Markandey Katju‘s concern, that by and large it is obsessive, it is narrow-minded, it focuses on middle class – urban concerns,…
‘Licensing journos: recipe for total state control’
The following is the full text of the statement issued by N. Ravi, president of the Editors’ Guild of India, on the proposal mooted by minister of state for information and broadcasting, Manish Tewari, on a “common examination” for student-journalists and a “licence” for journalists to perform their function: “The suggestion of the Union minister…
POLL: Common exam, licences for journalists?
As if the “idiots” in the media didn’t have enough problems to deal with—paid news, corruption, wage board, 12-minute-per-hour ad caps, cross-media controls, job losses, recession etc—the Union information and broadcasting minister Manish Tewari has now floated the kite of a “common examination” for journalists as a precursor to giving them “licenses” to operate, a…
Steve Forbes named in Forbes India legal notice
Three of the four Forbes India editors, who were forced out of the fortnightly business magazine allegedly for demanding that the promoters fulfill their contractual commitments on employee stock options (ESOPs), have shot off legal notices to Network 18 and Forbes Media, demanding immediate reinstatement and settlement of dues and damages for loss of livelihood,…
Shekhar Gupta storms into India Today powerlist
Thirteen out of India Today magazine’s 2013 ranking of the 50 most powerful people in India have interests in the media, but only two of them (former Indian Express editor Arun Shourie, Times Now editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami, Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta) are pure-play journalists. The chairman of the press council of India, Justice Markandey…
How the Press Council of India took shape
As the fulminations of the chairman of the Press Council of India, Justce Markandey Katju, swing from the ludicrous to the ridiculous, time to look at the day—50 years ago—the PCI took seed, not for its quixotic chief to plead for a convict’s sentence to be commuted or for a sovereign nation to be declared…
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