SHILLONG: Meghalaya journalists on Friday raised issues relating to their safety and security during a discussion with members of the Press Council of India (PCI) who are visiting all states of the North East on a fact finding mission about the safety and security of journalists.
Scribes informed the PCI that they faced intimidation from members of certain “organisations” who want their press releases to appear verbatim.
A subcommittee of the Press Council of India (PCI) is touring the country to hear about issues related to journalists’ safety and security. The report of the committee would be compiled in the next six months before sending it to the Parliament for further action.
The meeting which was held at a city hotel witnessed a large number of media persons airing their grievances to the visiting members of the PCI.
Members of media fraternity complained about petrol bombs being lobbed into their offices, vehicles being charred during bandh calls and threatening calls by certain groups and individuals. They even pointed to the incident when a legislator assaulted a journalist. Not all threats are physical; many put psychological pressure on journalists.
Several journalists raised the issue of job security and low salaries. They said that welfare measures for journalists in Meghalaya were inadequate.
One journalist raised concerns of brow-beating by lawyers who do not understand the procedure of filing a complaint against media organizations but are hell bent on dragging them to court at the slightest opportunity.
Interestingly even the issue of non-timely payment of advertisement bills by the Government crept in as an issue of insecurity.
On this, the six-member committee headed by Kosuri Amarnath as the convener and other members including, Arvind S Tengse, Kalyan Barooah, Arun Kumar, Rajeev Ranjan Nag and Uppala Lakshman, told the editors and publishers to send complaints with names of such lawyers and PCI would take necessary action.
They also exhorted the state government to put an ‘advertisement policy’ in place as they felt the recent hike in government’s advertisement rates after 17 years was not appropriate as the cost of publishing a newspaper has jumped 500 times in the same period.
On threats by legislators and organisations relating to placement of news the Committee stressed that news placement is the discretion of respective Editors and no one has any right to challenge this editorial prerogative.
The PCI team later met the Home Minister, Ms Roshan Warjri, Commissioner and Secretary ,IPR, M H K Marak, Secretary, Home (Police), F Kharlyngdoh, Additional DGP, S K Jain and Director IPR, H M Shangpliang. They conveyed the issues raised by the media persons to the Minister and officials.