Demand for regulatory authority over alternate media

Journalists’ Forum Assam (JFA), while expressing shock over a news portal for its unauthenticated uploading and subsequent retreating after rebuttal, has reiterated its old demand for an affective regulatory authority over the alternate media. The forum also appealed to the mainstream media of India to join in the chorus for its own interest.

It may be noted that a lesser known news portal (NewsJoint) last week uploaded a sensational item narrating the Bhartiya Janata Party’s northeast in-charge Ram Madhav in a compromised position with two local women, but later the portal went diminishing when the saffron party strongly reacted to it.

The portal claimed that BJP general secretary Madhav was caught red handed with the Naga women in a Dimapur hotel and he was held in captivity by the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland rebels. The NSCN rebels recorded the incident and threatened to make the full video footage public ‘if the BJP-RSS do not agree in calling off the State Assembly elections’.

The news titled ‘Has Ram Madhav landed the BJP in trouble in Nagaland’ spread like wildfire as the content was picked up by many regional newspapers of the region. Reposing full faith on Madhav, Nagaland’s saffron party leaders denounced the content and lodged complaints for legal actions against the portal.

As the debate went on viral in social media as well, the concerned portal (www.thenewsjoint.com/.../has-ram-madhav-landed-the-bjp-in-trouble-in-nagaland/) went down with the message displayed on the screen that ‘the resource …has been removed or is temporarily unavailable’.

The 60-member Nagaland Legislative Assembly elections are scheduled for 27 February next, counting of which will take place on 3 March. The saffron party leaders have been rigorously campaigning for the polls, even though a section of Naga politicians decided to boycott the elections demanding an early Naga solution prior to the electoral exercise.

“It is time to have a regulatory authority over the alternate/social media in our country to deal with similar situation arising here and there,” said a statement issued by JFA president Rupam Barua and secretary Nava Thakuria adding that the government should empower the press council (renaming as Media Council of India) with the inclusion of both electronic and alternate media under its jurisdiction.