New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Monday issued summonses to various media channels, including Times Now and Republic TV, on a petition filed by four Bollywood associations and 34 producers, and asked these outlets to come up with a “reasonable solution” for improvement in standards of news reporting.
The petitioners have sought a restraint on news channels from making or publishing what they dubbed as “irresponsible, derogatory and defamatory” remarks against Hindi film industry and its members.
Justice Rajiv Shakdhar sought the responses from media channels and posting the matter for further hearing on December 14.
While the court was hearing the matter through videoconference, petitioners’ counsel Rajiv Nayar submitted that it all started with the suicide of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, which became murder, then Bollywood became criminal, then drug peddlers and now ISI-linked. “This is the course of this defamation complaint,” he said.
He prayed that objectionable content be removed from the social media platforms like YouTube and Twitter. “What I want immediately is that the scurrilous stuff that has gone on Youtube and Twitter be removed immediately,” Nayar pleaded before the court.
Senior Advocate Akhil Sibal, who also appeared on behalf of Bollywood entities, submitted that there’s a disjunct between the normative idea of journalism and the work done by a certain section of TV media.
“Courts have traditionally, in the past, expressed the hope about self-regulation, auto-course correction. So they have been circumspect. But the point is — it (course correction) is not taking place,” he added.