Media bodies seek public consultations on plans for media council

New Delhi, Mar 26 (PTI) Media bodies on Wednesday demanded that the government hold public consultations with journalists' organisations and other stakeholders to arrive at a consensus on any move to set up a media council.
    The Brihanmumbai Union of Journalists, Delhi Union of Journalists, National Alliance of Journalists and the Andhra Pradesh Working Journalists Federation said there had been no consultation with journalists' unions and media bodies on the setting up of a mechanism to regulate all forms of media.
    "Any such council must include representatives from the media, media unions and independent public persons," they said, even as a parliamentary panel recommended setting up a media council to coordinate and implement laws governing different media -- print, broadcast and digital -- under one umbrella body.
    "However, the intent behind the recommendation of the parliamentary standing committee to set up a media council does not seem to be self-regulation but regulation by the government," the media bodies said in a joint statement.
    They said there had been a long-standing demand of journalists' unions to set up a media council to replace the Press Council of India, an independent and self-regulatory statutory body set up by an act of Parliament that was largely toothless and ineffective.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)