Top media bodies today stood in solidarity with NDTV over the one-day ban imposed on its Hindi channel and condemned the Centre's move, saying it sends a "dangerous signal" to the entire press, the freedom of which is already under "increasing threat" in the country.
Representatives of Editor's Guild of India, Indian Women's Press Corps, Federation of Press Clubs, Delhi Union of Journalists, Press Club of India and senior journalists from several media houses also gave a clarion call to the fraternity for a united fight for freedom of the press.
"NDTV's case is the writing on the wall and other media houses have recognised this writing. Media censorship has been insidiously creeping on us, the very signal over the last several years, which we unfortunately didn't recognise.
"It started with the past government only. It started with denial of access to corridors of power, access to PM's travel abroad and denial of access to information... We became part of the censorship," said Seema Mustafa, Treasurer of Editors Guild of India.
She was speaking at a forum hosted by Press Club of India at its premises to jointly protest the ban on NDTV India.
At the end of the event, the Press Club, on behalf of various umbrella media bodies, passed a resolution.
"The protest meeting representing various media organisations resolves that the decision is... Arbitrary and violates the fundamentalist principles of freedom of expression," said the resolution read out by the Club's President Gautam Lahiri.
"It is unfortunate and condemnable that the central government has resorted to extreme measures when press freedom is already under increasing threat in the country. This sends a dangerous signal to the entire media and undermines the safeguards under the democratic right of free expression enshrined in the Indian Constitution," it said.
Many journalists, however, flagged that, "signs of censorship have been shown in the past too, but unfortunately, only today we are seeing such a united response. It is good that the media has woken up from its slumber."
Several journalists from NDTV Group were also present.
Earlier in the day, NDTV India moved the Supreme Court against the government's order banning its telecast for a day for its coverage of the Pathankot terror attack.
The petition challenges the constitutional validity of the government order, the channel said in filing to the stock exchanges.
NDTV has refuted the allegations and pointed out that other channels and newspapers reported the same information.
Rajdeep Sardesai, consulting editor at India Today, said the government should have consulted the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) in dealing with the issue, and used the opportunity to "strengthen the self-regulation system... India could adopt the Ofcom model of the UK, but singling out on channel is arbitrary and authoritarian," he said.
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