Media in Jammu and Kashmir being 'choked' due to local administration curbs: Press Council of India panel

A three-member fact finding committee (FFC) of the Press Council of India on Jammu and Kashmir has said that the news media in the Union Territory, especially in the valley, is "slowly being choked" due to extensive curbs imposed by the local administration.

Six months after the PCI, a statutory quasi-judicial body which acts as a press watchdog, set up the FFC headed by Prakash Deubey (convenor) with members Suman Gupta and Gurbir Singh on a complaint by People’s Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti in September last year, it has submitted its report to the council which is yet to debate and adopt it.

In its report last week, the FFC said “news media in the Jammu and Kashmir region, and especially in the valley is slowly being choked mainly because of the extensive curbs imposed by the local administration.” “Our conclusion and recommendation is very specific: those indulging in any criminal acts, are not journalists pursuing their profession. If a ‘journalist’ is bearing arms or carrying grenades and other ammunition, he is not a journalist; he is a militant, and should be treated as such," the FFC said after meeting all stakeholders in its visits to twin capital cities of Jammu and Srinagar.

“However, the security establishment cannot label writing against government policies, or quoting a family or civilian sources in a story about excesses of the armed forces, or tweeting a point of view as ‘fake news’ or ‘anti-national activity’ and then arresting the journalist for sedition. It is not the business of journalists to support government policies or development work,” it said.

It said a journalist's job is to report the news as it happens, even if it is unpalatable to government officials.

"The tendency to see all critical reporting and opinions as ‘anti-national’ must stop. A conflict zone has many players and many aspects of events that unfold. A journalist cannot and should not ignore the government version; at the same time, he is not the spokesperson of the government,” the report said.

The report noted with concern that the public relations work of various government departments has been taken over by the police.