-Hindustan Times New Delhi: An inter-ministerial panel is likely to discuss on Tuesday a draft bill prepared by the consumer affairs ministry which seeks to punish celebrities who endorse products that are substandard or make misleading claims. The stringent provisions in the bill include a fine of Rs 10 lakh and jail of up to two years for a first offence by celebrities. For subsequent offences, the draft bill provides a fine...

-Livemint.com Arguments against the initiative, such as violation of net neutrality, splintering the Internet and compromising security and privacy, remain unchanged Mumbai: Is it better for the poor to access a bit of the Internet for free with a few strings attached rather than have no access to it at all? On the face of it, most of us will find it hard to disagree with this proposition. After all, no one...

-The Telegraph The Supreme Court today told the Centre to respond within four weeks on whether it had set up a panel, as a two-judge bench had ordered, to monitor if its directive on regulating government advertisements was being followed. The court's order to form such a three-member body of persons - "unimpeachable" in their "neutrality" - had come on May 13, but the government is yet to constitute such a panel. Hence...

-The Hindu ‘Largesse’ for non-existent entities from DAVP It was a casual enquiry, calling up publishers of some “newspapers” across the country. To the surprise of the officials who made the calls, they were found to be existing only on paper. In one instance, the dialled number connected to a laundry shop and in another, to a call centre. Yet, with a claimed circulation of 25,000, these non-existent publications had the status of...

-The Hindu Over 5,000 violations pertains to distracting ‘part-screen’ and ‘scrolling’ ads The Electronic Media Monitoring Centre (EMMC) of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has reported 13,000 instances of violations of regulatory norms by television channels in 2013-14. These violations came to light after Guntur-based Edara Gopi Chand, an activist with Media-Watch India, waged a three-year battle to expose the poor regulation of content on India’s TV channels. Using the RTI Act, Mr....