While chairing a meeting of Media Certification and Monitoring Committee here on Wednesday, Madhya Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer Jaideep Govind has urged the media to follow guidelines for election-related telecast, broadcast and publishing.
Informing about guidelines prescribed by National Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) and Election Commission of India, Govind urged news broadcasters and publishers to pay special attention to them.
Govind said that it should be endeavour of news broadcasters to inform people about election-related issues, rules pertaining to electoral process etc. in a positive way. A news channel should not commit itself to ideology of any particular party or candidate.
News broadcasters’ duty is to remain impartial, specially when they are reporting elections. They should keep away from rumours, baseless speculations and misinformation. Govind said that NBSA has advised news broadcasters not to air any hate speech or distasteful subject matter that may create unrest and anger among people. News broadcasters should avoid broadcast of news that may create mutual hatred, enmity, specially on the basis of caste, religion, community, region or language.
They should exercise special caution about accuracy and truth while reporting opinion polls and elections. He informed that committees to monitor and act against paid news have been set up in all districts. Workshops will soon be held in districts on monitoring and media certification of paid news. He directed to disseminate directives of Election Commission regarding social media to field staff. Copies of commission’s recent directives on paid news were also distributed to participants of the meeting.
Committee’s Member-Secretary and Joint Chief Electoral Officer SS Bansal and members including senior journalist Girish Upadhyay, Akashwani Kendra’s Joint Director (News) and representative of UNI’s Bureau Chief were also present on the occasion.