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Journalism of Courage
THE BJP has got the most coverage on DD News and its regional channels since the announcement of Lok Sabha elections, followed by the Congress, according to details submitted by the national news broadcaster to Election Commission on Friday.
Although the gap between the two national parties in terms of hours of coverage is significant, government sources told The Indian Express that DD News has insisted in its report that no single party has been given an advantage over others.
The Commission had sought a report from the channel on the airtime provided to all political parties after the opposition Congress, in its complaint to the poll panel this week, alleged that DD News is giving preferential treatment to the ruling BJP.
Earlier, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury had requested the poll panel to ask Doordarshan and All India Radio (AIR) to air the speeches and statements of political leaders as prominently as they had aired Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the nation on the successful test of the anti-satellite missile.
The Election Commission’s guidelines for coverage of election by Doordarshan and All India Radio states that the two public broadcasters should provide fair and balanced coverage of campaigning and excerpts from campaign speeches. By balanced, it is meant that no one political should be given “substantially more coverage than the others” and this balance need not be achieved in a single day or in a single story but over a reasonable period of time, say one week. In other words, balance implies that it shouldn’t appear as if “one political party is being projected to the exclusion of others”.
In addition to the above information, EC had also asked for an explanation from DD News on why it ran an hour-long broadcast of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s public address “Main bhi Chowkidaar” on March 31. This was also after the Congress lodged a complaint over the broadcast with EC.
The “sole reason for the broadcast was to promote the personal achievements” of Modi to “justify their election tag line”, Congress had said in its complaint. It charged that it was shown live on DD News and its YouTube channel and was even being “promoted on the social media handles of DD News (@DDNewsLive)”. The programme, it complained, had nothing to do with any issue of national importance, which required live broadcast for its entire duration.
To this, DD News had submitted its reply to EC on April 2 that the event was sourced from an ANI feed and that it was aired for its newsworthiness just as it had covered Congress’ manifesto release live on Tuesday.
The Commission is expected to deliberate on DD News’s response next week.
