Stop airing anti-national content: Govt to media

The Union government on Friday issued a fresh advisory to the private news channels, asking them to abstain from showing content “which promotes anti-national attitudes”.

The Information and Broadcasting (I&B) ministry in its advisory asked the news channels to refrain from airing content which was “likely to instigate violence or contains anything against maintenance of law and order”.

Seeking "strict compliance" of its advisory, the ministry has asked the news channels to abstain from showing contents which contain “anything affecting the integrity of the nation, criticises, maligns or slanders any individual in person or certain groups, segments of the social public and moral life of the country.”

The ministry had issued an advisory by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry on December 11 when the Citizenship Amendment Bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha, after which protests had broken out in several parts of the country.

The ministry had issued similar advisory last week after some news channels aired the footages of violent protests in the Northeast against the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in the Parliament.

“It is observed that notwithstanding the above advisory, some TV channels are telecasting content which does not appear to be in the spirit of the Programme Codes specified therein,” the ministry noted in its latest advisory.

This comes even as the Editors Guild of India (EGI) recently decried the ministry's December 12 advisory to the news channels, terming it as “regressive.” It also demanded that the government should withdraw the advisory