Assertive I and B

IN Media Watch Briefs | 13/08/2015

The public broadcaster should not carry news which criticises the government? Even when it is by a state chief minister?  When did that become the norm?  ET reports that officials of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting pulled up the director general of All India Radio for carrying a report on the Editors' Guild criticism of the government's show cause notice to three TV channels on the Yakub Memon coverage. Apparently AIR has also been ticked off in the recent past for airing criticism by Manipur CM Ibobo Singh, and  Bihar CM Nitish Kumar.

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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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