•  •  Dark Mode

Your Interests & Preferences

I am a...

law firm lawyer
in-house company lawyer
litigation lawyer
law student
aspiring student
other

Website Look & Feel

 •  •  Dark Mode
Blog Layout

Save preferences

How the state machinery censors TV obscenities & more [via The Caravan]

The Caravan investigates Indian broadcast censorship via the government’s low-key Electronic Media Monitoring Centre (EMMC), which presides over the suitability of jokes in The Simpsons for kids, criticism of Narendra Modi and other politicians, and the chilling effect on explicit language on channels such as Comedy Central, and the more political:

The government’s attempt to exert control over television isn’t limited to supposedly obscene content. It has also targeted matter that it deems politically dangerous. In April, for instance, the ministry of information and broadcasting banned Al Jazeera News for five days for “cartographic aggression”—displaying a map of Kashmir that did not depict Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Aksai Chin as part of India. The most prominent recent example of such censorship occurred in early August, when the government served the news channel NDTV with a show-cause notice over its coverage of the case of Yakub Memon, who was executed in July for his involvement in a series of bombings in Mumbai in 1993, in which more than 250 people were killed. The channel, the notice said, “not only questioned the judicial system of India but tended to denigrate the very institution.” Similar notices were sent to two other channels, ABP and Aaj Tak, for airing telephone interviews with the gangster Chhota Shakeel.

NK Singh, the general secretary of the Broadcast Editors’ Association, is stinging in his criticism of these actions. “The notices were made on invented pretexts and are an example of the typical predatory instinct of the state machinery to hunt media freedom,” he said when I met him in September. He argued that the channels had violated no laws, and that they were within their rights to cover every aspect of the case. “If there was a contempt of court, why didn’t the court take cognisance against the channels?” he said.

Click to show 2 comments
at your own risk
(alt+c)
By reading the comments you agree that they are the (often anonymous) personal views and opinions of readers, which may be biased and unreliable, and for which Legally India therefore has no liability. If you believe a comment is inappropriate, please click 'Report to LI' below the comment and we will review it as soon as practicable.