The Supreme Court has taken steps to lay down a code for media reporting. This attempt at prior restraint on the media is a dangerous move with precedent from authoritarian polities. In a context where the judiciary has been lax in defending the media from attacks which seek to curb its freedom, such unilateral moves will not remedy bad reporting but rather make conditions worse for the media to play...
More »SEARCH RESULT
An American lesson in Court reporting-AG Noorani
For three days in the last week of March, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments on the Affordable Care Act. No Federal law in the U.S. in recent memory has aroused such bitter controversy. If it is struck down as unconstitutional, President Barack Obama's prestige will suffer. He is due for re-election in November. Very many think the court will rule against him in June. The core of the law...
More »Gujarat HC quashes sedition cases against TOI
-The Times of India The Gujarat high court on Wednesday quashed the charges of sedition that former Ahmedabad police commissioner O P Mathur had filed against The Times of India's Ahmedabad edition in June 2008. The court quashed all five FIRs, which accused the resident editor and the correspondent of inciting people against the police. The FIRs had been filed after TOI ran a series of investigative reports on Mathur's suspected underworld...
More »Will courts regulate the media?-Nikhil Kanekal
Inaccuracy in reporting court proceedings has caused friction between the press and the legal community On the morning of 10 August 2011, senior lawyer Harish Salve looked upset as he entered Chief Justice of India (CJI) S.H. Kapadia’s courtroom, holding a newspaper that had published an article on a case he was arguing in the Supreme Court. Salve complained that the article in question, written by a journalist at news agency Press...
More »Crime, sex and violence too under the gavel-Nikhil Kanekal
An ongoing hearing before a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court, looking into media coverage of sub-judice cases, has had its scope expanded to include coverage of criminal investigations and television shows containing sex and violence. The court intends to examine questions related to criminal investigations, including raids, questioning and arrests by police officials. If the court does rule adversely, then crime reporting may no longer be the same and late-night...
More »