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Articles: My Thoughts | NEWS to be killed by censorship.
- Mr. Aziz Ahmed Quraishi Quraishi
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There is a huge call for the censorship of news in the Indian media today. This is all because one news channel has taken up the task of making an uncensored society. What did the censorship of the film industry do? It has brought in more exposure and more sex into the society. According to a research by a Delhi based institute it has been found that girls and boys aged around (15-25) almost 7 out of every 10 girls and 9 out of every 10 boys have premarital sex (research done in metropolitan cities including Bangalore and Hyderabad).
Basically this is how the censorship is helping the society, instead of educating people on employment growth and other various professions that could be taken up the film industry lures the poor children towards sex and politics. This will obviously ruin their lives. In India, films are said to teach some lesson to the society but these days they are only meant to move people away from there eastern culture to there western culture.
After the censor of films its now time for censoring the news! The Indian government is working on a regulation act for broadcast. How would censorship of News help? How would one evaluate what to censor and what to leave while reporting candid facts? Many of the controversial news that is reported will snarl at a few and be a source of information for others.
Who are the ones who would support censorship of News? Definitely the people who fear that their activities may be exposed to the public, the authentication of the news is granted by the visual or any audio clipping following it. Censorship may rob the news of its authentication.
The Fundamental Rights of our country clearly state that every citizen of India has a Right to Speech. We are unaware that in India freedom of the Press is a part of the Freedom of Speech and Expression granted by Article 19(1)(a) of our Constitution. There is no specific Constitutional provision ensuring freedom of the press.
According to the Supreme Court judgment in Sakal Papers v Union of India, (AIR 1962 SC 305) the freedom of the press is regarded as a 'species of which freedom of expression is a genus.' Being only a right flowing from the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press in India therefore stands on no higher footing than the freedom of speech of a citizen, and the press enjoys no privilege as such distinct from the freedom of the citizen. (M P Jain in Indian Constitutional Law, Wadhwa And Company, Nagpur, Fourth Edition, Reprint 2002, page 527). It shares its thoughts and makes people respond to those thoughts.
Today it is clear that every fact of life has some or the other type of crime associated with it. No one in the world is a saint. The atmosphere is the same from workplaces to worship places; from Pundits to Mullahs, every one in the country has been and is associated with activities related to corruption.
Censorship of broadcast media may not be very effective. Films depicting violence, etc have found their way to the screens. News and other pieces of information which are to be keep the citizen informed will find it much more difficult to meet the censorship cuts. A pertinent question that prevails- who is going to decide what is good and what is bad; what could get be suitable information and what information could harm somebody’s interests? All these questions open another debate on Media and Ethics.
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