Bengaluru: The Karnataka government has fallen in line with the central government’s direction to set up 24×7 control rooms to monitor programmes telecast on private and cable channels in the state.
Called monitoring cells, they have been set up at the district level as well, and will closely monitor both news and entertainment content.
Starting Monday, 16 December, the monitoring cells can take suo motu cognisance of offensive content, and register complaints. They will also assist citizens in lodging complaints against private channels if they find merit in them.
High court had pulled up govt
In August 2017, the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry had informed all states and union territories that the government had decided to empower committees monitoring the broadcasts on private FM and community radio channels to also monitor private satellite TV channels.
“I request you to constitute these state and district-level monitoring committees wherever these have not been set up so far, and to effectively monitor all types of content,” the letter sent by additional secretary Jayashree Mukherjee said.
However, Karnataka had not followed the order until the high court, hearing a PIL filed by social worker Geeta Mishra, pulled up the state government for not adhering to it. The court, in July, passed an order asking the state to set up the monitoring centre within six weeks.
In her complaint, Mishra had alleged that TV channels were airing imbalanced and unmonitored content that could lead to disharmony in society. She said several channels were airing information suited to their ‘selfish motives’, which could further lead to violence in society.
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How it will function
P. Manivannan, the Karnataka government’s information and public relations secretary told ThePrint, “The control room set up in Bengaluru used to function 16 hours a day, but now the timing has been extended to 24 hours.”
IAS officer Manivannan explained that the state-level control room has an exclusive number, 080-22028013, and a dedicated mobile and WhatsApp number, 9480841212. Complainants can also email the monitoring cell at complaintsontelevision@gmail.com.
All these complaints would be registered under the provisions of the Cable Television Networks (Regulations) Act, 1995, Manivannan said.
“We are just following court orders. We have always wanted to monitor what is being aired as news, and now we are doing it as ordered by the court,” he said.
The monitoring cells at the district level will be headed by the deputy commissioners, superintendents of police, academicians, psychologists, sociologists and representatives from NGOs working for women, children and social welfare.
However, at the state level, it will be headed by the secretary in-charge of information and public relations (Manivannan at present), a representative from the director general of police, as well as secretaries from the departments of social welfare and women and child development.
‘Aimed at curbing media rights’
ThePrint approached the editors of several private Kannada news channels, but they preferred not to be quoted on this subject.
A senior journalist associated with the local media said the monitoring cell is nothing but another “quasi-judicial body”, which is aimed at curbing the rights of the media.
“A reporter has a right to do a story, and there will always be somebody objecting to it. Does that mean that every story will have a case registered against it? This would mean we would be spending more time in the courts than in the studios,” the journalist said.
Other journalists also refused to come on record, saying the issue was “too controversial”.
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My first instinct is, This is not a good idea. One can understand concern over what is broadcast during a communal riot or a tense time. However, the effort should be to encourage self regulation. Any intervention by the government in the working of the media cannot possibly be benign, if that does not sound too cynical.