A Bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, Indu Malhotra and KM Joseph have recently came down heavily on Sudarshan TV Editor-in-Chief Suresh Chavhanke’s disturbing and divisive show “Bindas Bol”, literally meaning “Speak Carelessly” and strongly hinted towards ‘pre-censorship’ of the show, till the matter is conclusively decided by the court.
This show has been promoted online with ‘#UPSC_Jihad’, which denigrates Muslims, by accusing them of trying to infiltrate the bureaucracy, and belittles the Union Public Service Commission, by saying that it offers unfair advantage to the community.The show has presented an array of facts and analysis, which is rightly said by the Supreme Court as, informed by a “wanton disregard of the truth”, and ‘is premised on a denial of the reality of a plural India’.
The bench further observed that, the show was a ‘hateful propaganda masquerading as analysis’.Media, be it print, digital or electronic is supposed to report news but presenting distorted facts, purposeful vilification of a community and rumourmongering shouldn’t be tolerated.
The unfortunate instinct of those who remain in power is to weaponize news with the help of their collaborators in TV studios, which is both distasteful and bad for the democracy but resorting to prior restraint as emphasised by the Supreme Court in this case, will have far reaching ramifications and a precedent of such sorts will definitely be misused by the Government to muzzle dissent. However, interestingly, Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta stumbled over the question that, to what extent can the media be regulated by other institutions? As on August 28, the same Court had said ‘no’, to impose a “pre-broadcast interlocutory injunction” against the show.
And later, on September 9, the Central Government had allowed transmission of an episode of #UPSC_Jihad, with the precondition, that it shall not be in violation of the Programme Code. However, subsequently, the Bench opined that there is a change in circumstances and “the drift, tenor and content of the episodes is to bring [a] community into public hatred and disrepute,” which violates the Code under the Cable Television Network (Regulation) Act, 1995. As section 5 of the Act prescribes that, “no person shall transmit or re-transmit through a cable service any programme unless such programme is in conformity with the prescribed programme code.”
And section 19 enables the Government to prohibit a broadcast in the public interest if the programme is “ likely to promote on grounds of religion, race, language, caste or community or any other ground whatsoever, disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious, racial, linguistic or regional groups or castes or communities or which is likely to disturb the public tranquillity.
Pre-censorship or prior-restraint on speech is a violation of the ‘fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression’ as enshrined under Article 19(1) of the Constitution and any restriction so imposed has to be well founded under Article 19(2),i.e., within the premises of the doctrine of reasonable restrictions.
Thus, the procedure that has to be followed while seeking such a prior restraint is, the affected parties only would have to file an objection in court for restraint prior to telecast of the programme, until the matter reaches judicial cognisance and the court could rule for the continuation of the restraint. The court had rightly apprehended that,the hateful contents have the potency to spread very fast across social media platforms and can therefore promote or incite violence.
But, according to Justice Chandrachud, self-regulation can be the best solution, which should be experimented with, more sincerely and rigorously. Prior restraint or pre-censorship of media shall definitely set a dangerous precedent.
Normally, news has a very short life, it remains relevant for few hours, and a mere allegation can therefore be fatal for a particular news programme. But if it is done the other way around, i.e., the News Broadcasters’ Association whose domain contains legal, ethical and regulatory functions can supervise and monitor the activities of media, and it can be both harmonious and at the same time reduce external interference on the freedom of media to report sensibly.
We need to understand that, insensible behaviour of media and the so called ‘lynch by media’ or unjust ‘media trial’ shouldn’t be tolerated; at the same time pre-censorship of media is dangerous for democracy.
(The writer is a legal and public policy expert and a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law and Media Studies, School of Mass Communication, KIIT University. He can be reached at sjyotiranjan3@gmail.com.)
