Pant’s accident coverage distasteful: Centre slams channels

The Centre on Monday (January 9) said the TV coverage cricketer Rishabh Pant’s road accident and other crime stories were “distasteful” and “heart wrenching” and asked the media to strictly follow the programme code laid down under the relevant law.

In an advisory issued to all private satellite channels, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting cited the coverage of the cricketer’s car crash, airing of distressing images of dead bodies and thrashing of a five-year-old boy and said such reporting offended “good taste and decency”.

Also read: Centre warns TV channels against making ‘false claims’, using ‘scandalous headlines’

“…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,” read the advisory issued on Monday.

The government said that while the channels borrowed the videos and images from social media, they put “little effort” to “modulate or attune or edit such clips so as to make it compliant and consistent with the spirit of the Programme Code.”

Also read: 30 mins of ‘public service’, ‘national interest’ content must for TV channels

The ministry has “strongly advised” television channels to attune their systems and practices of reporting incidents of crime, accidents, and violence, including death, in conformity with the Programme Code laid under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act.

(With inputs from agencies)