Ethics and Freedom

NEW DELHI: The Indian Broadcast Federation (IBF) and the Indian Media Group (IMG) today met the Information & Broadcast secretary S K Arora for an interaction on the Broadcast Bill 2006. IBF has opposed the cross-media holding restrictions and the so-called Draconian clauses in the bill. It said, the draft bill should be discussed with the industry, before having taken to the cabinet and...

MUMBAI: Media bodies are now waking up to condem on the draft of Broadcast Bill prepared by the information and broadcasting (I&B). After the Indian Broadcast Federation (IBF) has opposed the cross-media holding restrictions and the so-called Draconian clauses in the bill. The Film & Television Producers Guild of India Ltd has expressed its concerns about recent reports in the media that the...

WASHINGTON - The red camera light blinked on, and news anchor Jennifer Gray began speaking: "In Iraq ..." Her face and words flashed via satellite from an Alexandria studio around the world. But, Gray isn't a TV reporter on NBC, CNN or FOX. She's a Navy petty officer who anchors a news show on the Pentagon Channel. Gray and her colleagues report to audiences as close as the barracks at Quantico...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is concerned by the proposed Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill, 2006, which seeks to give the government greater power over the media, places restrictions on cross media ownership and hints at strict content regulation for news channels. There are concerns that the Information and Broadcasting Ministry will have greater control...

Republican lawmakers who think attacking the New York Times could help carry them to victory in 2006 might want to consider how that tactic played for the party's presidential nominee a decade ago. In the final stretch of the 1996 campaign, the former Senate majority leader, Bob Dole, unleashed an unexpectedly bitter series of assaults on the newspaper. "We're not going to let the media steal this...

The recent disclosure of a secret databank operation by the federal government that tracks terrorist financing has prompted calls to punish reporters and newspapers involved in the disclosure of a confidential anti-terrorist program. The ire comes principally from supporters of President Bush's administration, who believe the press has no business exposing sensitive information when terrorism...

On June 1, 1972, White House Counsel Charles Colson wrote a memo to President Richard Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, saying, "I hate the (New York) Times as much as anyone else and would like to be in the first wave of Army shock troops going in during the second term to tear down the printing presses." Colson and Haldeman hated the Times because the newspaper had more credibility than...

New Delhi, July. 9 (PTI): Trial by media has come under the scrutiny of an official committee drafting the proposed broadcasting code and guidelines which recommends that broadcast service providers (BSPs) "should avoid" such activism since "a man is innocent till proven guilty by law". The guidelines, drafted by a sub-committee under the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, feels that "news...

The preparation of a draft Broadcast Services Regulation Bill, 2006, should occasion no surprise. It has been a long time coming. Broadcasting in India has been subject to executive guidelines rather than any comprehensive statutory regulations ever since cable and satellite television were permitted in the early 1990s. A Supreme Court judgment in 1995 formally decreed that the airwaves were...

Reaction was fast and furious to last Sunday's column in which I praised The New York Times for publishing information about the Bush administration's secret monitoring of a vast database of international financial transactions. In the column, I was critical of the president and his supporters for "declaring war" on The Times and the media in general, and I stated that this was one war that Bush...