Government warns TV channels against exaggerating gory videos
Crimes highlighted on TV cause adverse psychological impact on children, and invade privacy of victims
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has cautioned TV channels, mainly news channels against showing gory images and videos of dead, injured, murders, etc, in a loop, citing adverse psychological impact on children and others.
The Ministry said that it has repeatedly issued advisory to Private Satellite Television channels for adhering to the Programme Code laid down under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995.
However, there has only been a spike in such footage over the last few months, including the injury of cricketer Rishabh Pant, and daylight hacking of a woman by her brother in Tamil Nadu.
It said in a written advisory, “…over the last few months, several television channels including mainstream channels have reported incidents of accidents, deaths, and violence including violence against women, children and elderly in manners which grossly compromised on ‘good taste and decency’, and were quite unpalatable to the eyes and ears of a common viewer.”
While TV channels mostly source such videos from social media or from the CCTV owners, the government highlighted that TV is a platform usually watched by families.
It added, “…television channels have shown dead bodies of individuals and images/videos of injured persons with blood splattered around, people, including women, children and elderly being beaten mercilessly in close shots, continuous cries and shrieks of a child being beaten by a teacher, shown repeatedly over several minutes including circling the actions thereby making it even more ghastly, without taking the precaution of blurring the images or showing them from long shots.”
Such reporting also has an adverse psychological impact on the children besides crucial issue of invasion of privacy, the Ministry said. News editors must take care to see the videos telecast do not offend anyone against good taste or decency; contain anything obscene, defamatory, deliberate, false and suggestive innuendos and half-truths; criticize, malign or slander any individual in person or certain groups, segments of social, public and moral of the country; and are unsuitable for unrestricted public exhibition.
However, a question remains. While it is easy to reign in TV channels, how will the government check the flood of such images on the social media and Internet unless people are not sensitised.
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