The newly appointed Chairman of the Press Council of India (PCI) and an eminent former judge of the Supreme Court Justice Markandey Katju now faces a somewhat Hamletian dilemma — how best to suit his actions to his words. And, in the process, how best to also diffuse the heated debate and controversy that has followed some of his recent remarks on the state and the functioning of Indian media. Interestingly,...

The Editors Guild of India has expressed its concern at the implications of Monday's ruling of the Supreme Court, rejecting a Special Leave Petition seeking a stay against a high court order asking the Times Now channel to deposit Rs 100 crore as a pre-condition for hearing its appeal. "While recognising that the law of defamation is an important qualification of the fundamental right to freedom of expression, the Guild believes...

-The Hindu   Vice President Hamid Ansari has come out in favour of a media regulation framework, agreeing with Press Council Chairman Justice Markandey Katju that self-regulation has failed. “Collective self-regulation has yet to succeed in substantive measure because it is neither universal nor enforceable. Individual self-regulation has also failed due to personal predilection and the prevailing of personal interest over public interest,” said Mr. Ansari. He was speaking on the occasion of National...

Till a few years ago, the final arbiter of what is and is not permissible programming was the Union information & broadcasting ministry. In this scrupulous act of discernment, it was aided by the central monitoring services: college students would be appointed as monitors to watch television programmes and listen to radio shows round the clock and report to the ministry. Any channel or radio show that transgressed the programme...

In this Idea Exchange moderated by Senior Editor Archna Shukla, I&B minister Ambika Soni speaks about self-regulation by the media, empowering the Press Council of India and the Congress party’s stand on corruption Archna Shukla: There is a growing perception that the government is unhappy with media criticism. The editor of a leading English daily publicly claimed that government advertisements have been stopped to his publication. Is the government being vindictive? I have...