With large swathes of the Andhra Pradesh media either owned by political parties or lined up behind them, unbiased news is a rarity.
As the AP and Telangana governments try to muzzle the media, the latter, playing its own games, has either bent or crawled.
For Telangana journalists, Christmas has come early. Santa Rao has given them flats virtually free of cost.  
The Telangana media, by reporting the ruling party’s leaks, has become complicit in its violation of the election code of conduct.
Misuse of family-owned media at election time is exemplified in Warangal by the CM's newspaper and TV channel.
TV channels are caught in the crossfire when Andhra Pradesh and Telangana fight. But they also make the fur fly because their owners are politicians.
With free expression in the news the continuing blackout of two TV channels in Telangana bears remembering.
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The new term for self censorship is voluntary censorship, as proposed by companies like Netflix and Hotstar. ET reports that streaming video service Amazon Prime is opposing a move by its peers to adopt a voluntary censorship code in anticipation of the Indian government coming up with its own rules. Amazon is resisting because it fears that it may alienate paying subscribers.                   

Clearly, the run to the 2019 elections is on. A journalist received a call from someone saying they were from Aajtak channel and were conducting a survey, asking whom she was going to vote for in 2019. On being told that her vote was secret, the caller assumed she wasn't going to vote for 'Modiji'. The caller, a woman, also didn't identify herself. A month or two earlier the same journalist received a call, this time from a man, asking if she was going to vote for the BSP.                 

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