Indus Valley Times

NEW DELHI, JAN 9: The Centre has warned private television channels against broadcasting gory pictures and videos of dead bodies, accidents, and women, children or elderly in distress.

Referring to at least 12 instances, where blood-smeared images and footage of bodies and injured were aired, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) on Monday ‘strongly’ advised to attune their systems and practices of reporting incidents of crime, accidents and violence, including death in conformity with the Programme Code.

The ministry issued an advisory after observing television channels for months.

“Several television channels including mainstream channels have reported incidents of accidents, deaths, and violence including violence against women, children and elderly in manners which grossly compromised on ‘good taste and decency’, and were quite unpalatable to the eyes and ears of a common viewer,” read the advisory.

Terming the telecast a matter of grave concern, the note further stated that such reporting has an adverse psychological impact on the children.

The manner of reporting such incidents is distasteful, heart-wrenching, distressful, and sensational thereby offending good taste and decency said the ministry.

“There is also a crucial issue of invasion of privacy which could be potentially maligning and defamatory. In most of these cases it was also observed that these video clips, etc., have been taken by the broadcasters from social media and little effort has been made to modulate or attune or edit such clips so as to make them compliant and consistent with the spirit of the Programme Code,” the note stated.

Television, being a platform usually watched by families in households with people from all cohorts – old aged, middle-aged. children, etc., and with various socio-economic backgrounds, place a certain sense of responsibility and discipline among the broadcasters, which have been enshrined in the Programme Code and the Advertising Code laid down under the said Act.

-TNIE