Govt advisory to TV channels against broadcasting disturbing footage, says it’s ‘distressful’

The Central government on Monday issued an advisory to all the TV channels against broadcasting disturbing footage, and distressing images including incidents of accidents, deaths, and violence against women and children, saying no editing of violent videos is being done by the channels. The government has said that gory images of blood, dead bodies, physical assault are “distasteful and distressing” for the audience and are “against programme code”. The advisory has been issued after several instances of lack of discretion by television channels were noticed by the ministry.

In a press release, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said, “…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.”

The advisory stated that such images can have an adverse psychological impact on the children. Speaking of invasion of privacy of the victims in such videos, the ministry said it could be “potentially maligning and defamatory”.

“The ministry has observed that in most cases the videos are being taken from social media and broadcast without editorial discretion and modifications to ensure compliance and consistency with the Programme Code,” it said.

The press release mentioned the video footage of cricketer Rishabh Pant who was recently injured in a car accident and the incident of a teacher brutally thrashing a 5-year-old boy until he lost consciousness in a coaching classroom in Patna, Bihar. On the latter incident, the ministry said the footage was played without muting the “painful cries of the child begging for mercy.”

“Raising concern over such broadcast and in view of larger public interest involved and having regard to the nature of audience of television channels including elderly, women and children, the Ministry has strongly advised all private television channels to attune their systems and practices of reporting incidents of crime, accidents and violence, including death in conformity with the Programme Code,” it said.