The New Central Media Accreditation Guidelines issued recently by the sarkar is another asinine, half-baked legislation loaded with draconian clauses to restrict any critical and investigative reporting of government affairs.
No meaningful consultation with stakeholders like media organisations, editors guild or independent journalist bodies was done by the Press Information Bureau before coming up with these revised guidelines.
As per the new guidelines police verification is required before grant of accreditation without defining the contours of the verification; this grants unfettered powers to the police for denial of empanelment to media persons whose views are not in consonance with the saffron ideology. This would manifestly lead to shutting the door on credible news reporting.
The general public shall be bereft of balanced news and would only be fed biased handouts by pliant 'sarkari journalists', so much for an independent press which the PM professes to encourage.
'Tum din ko agar raat kaho, raat kahengey '...remember that number from the movie 'Safar'?
