New Delhi: Seeking self-regulation by the media, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday quoted Mahatma Gandhi and said there should be no government interference in the functioning of media.
He advised self-regulation by making appropriate changes with times, asserting that things will not change from external control.
The Prime Minister, at the golden jubilee celebrations of Press Council of India, also expressed concern over recent murders of journalists, and said that it was very painful and a most dangerous way of suppressing truth. His remarks came against the backdrop of murder of two journalists in Bihar.
“Mahatma Gandhi had said uncontrolled writing can create huge problems but he had also said that external interference would wreak havoc. Controlling it (media) externally cannot be imagined,” Modi said.
“Government should not interfere. It is true that self-introspection is not easy. It is the responsibility of the PCI and those associated with the press to see to it that what appropriate changes you can make with time. Things do not change from external control,” the Prime Minister said.
Referring to the Kandahar hijack in 1999, he said news channels’ reportage of angry reactions of the families of passengers in the Indian Airlines flight made terrorists emboldened as they thought they can get anything from the Indian government with this kind of public pressure.
The episode set off introspection in the media which later came with norms for the coverage of such incidents, Modi said.
As he spoke about self-regulation, Modi gave the analogy of a mother telling her child to eat a little less or not to eat. The child would listen to his mother but not to an outsider, he said.
Mr Modi said that when Emergency was declared in 1975 , the Press Council was shut and it was reborn when the Morarji Desai government came to power in 1977.
