Prasar Bharati threatens to cancel PTI subscription over 'anti-national' reporting

The state broadcaster Prasar Bharati has threatened to discontinue subscribing to the country's prominent news agency Press Trust of India (PTI), accusing it of "anti-national" reporting of recent events involving India-China border row.

The broadcaster has written to the news agency, which is jointly promoted and owned by a large number of newspapers, saying it was reviewing its relationship with PTI as it is "no longer tenable" to continue the "relationship", sources said.

The Prasar Bharati's move came soon after PTI published an interview with Chinese Ambassador to India Sun Weidong on Thursday, followed by another interview of Indian Ambassador to China Vikram Misri on Friday, indicating that the broadcaster is unhappy with the coverage.

On Friday night, PTI had tweeted quoting Misri as saying that the Chinese troops needed to move back to their side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC). This triggered an intense Twitter discussion, as it contradicted Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks during an all-party meeting that no one has intruded into Indian territory.

Interestingly, this particular tweet posted at 8:45 pm — India hopes China will realise its responsibility in de-escalation and disengaging by moving back to its side of LAC: Indian envoy to China — did not find a place in the news copy released by PTI at around 10:15 pm on Friday.

PTI had released 11 one-liners between 8:03 pm and 9:10 pm on the wires regarding the interview while there was no denial from the government on the controversial tweet..

The agency had come under criticism after the Chinese Embassy tweeted the interview with a section accusing it of amplifying Beijing's perspective.