In the first such action, a Hindi news channel has been asked to go off-air for a day for the way it covered the Pathankot terror attack.
An inter-Ministerial committee of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry recommended that ‘NDTV India’ be taken off air on November 9 after it concluded that the broadcaster had revealed “strategically-sensitive” details while covering the terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force base. The Ministry has subsequently asked the channel to go off-air for the day.
The Ministry, while invoking powers under the Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Act, said it “orders to prohibit the transmission or re-transmission of NDTV India channel for one day on any platform throughout India with effect from 12:01 am on November 9, 2016 till 12:01 am of November 10, 2016”.
This is the first of its kind order against a TV channel over its coverage of a terror attack, the norms regarding which were notified in June 2015. However, given the fact that this was the first such case where it was being applied, the decision to not make the penalty too harsh was taken, sources said.
The panel concluded that the channel had given away crucial information while covering the terror attack on the airbase on January 2, which is “prima facie” violation of norms, said the official sources.
It felt that such information that was aired could have been readily picked up by terrorist handlers and had the potential to “cause massive harm not only to national security, but also to lives of civilians and Defence personnel.” The channel allegedly revealed information on the ammunition stockpiled in the airbase, MIGs and other fighter planes, rocket launchers, mortars, helicopters, fuel tanks etc “which was likely to be used by the terrorists or their handlers to cause massive harm,” the sources said.
As the content appeared to be in violation of programming norms, a show-cause notice was issued to the channel in January this year. The channel in turn had replied that it was a case of “subjective interpretation” and that most of the information they had put out was already in public domain in print, electronic and the social media.
The committee, however held that the channel “appeared to give out the exact location of the remaining terrorists with regard to the sensitive assets in their vicinity” in their telecast in real time.
The panel expressed “grave concern” that this was a matter of national security and that the channel had revealed sensitive details like location of ammunition depot viz-a-viz the space where the terrorists were holed up, location of school and residential areas.