Katju tells Karnataka Speaker: Stop action against media

New Delhi: Defending journalists who reported the Karnataka assembly porn scandal, Press Council Chairman Justice Markandey Katju today wrote to the Karnataka Speaker urging him to drop proceedings initiated against media persons.

“Some MLAs of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly were filmed watching porn in the Assembly. Instead of commending the media persons for their professionalism, proceedings have been started against them,” he said.

In his letter to Speaker K G Bopaiah, he requested him to reconsider his decision and withdraw the proceedings against media persons, and instead “take strong action against the MLAs who have brought disgrace to the House”.

Katju said that he felt that such proceedings against media persons jeopardise the freedom of the media guaranteed as a fundamental right by the Constitution of India, and seek to create an impression that it is the media which has brought the House into disrepute rather than the MLAs involved.

He said the Inquiry Committee set up by the Karnataka Assembly in the matter should seek details of this “sordid affair,” though from the questions they had asked it seemed they were treating journalists like those accused in an offence.

“In my respectful opinion the inquiry committee can certainly ask media persons concerned questions to ascertain correct facts about this sordid affair. But from what I could gather, the questions being asked give the impression that the media persons are being treated as an accused of some offence, and are being grilled accordingly,” Katju noted.

He said as people are the masters and the legislators only their representatives, the public has the right to be informed of the activities of the legislators.

“And the media is an agency of the people to give them this information. Hence I do not see what wrong the media has done by telecasting the watching of porn by the MLAs in the House,” Katju said.

“To my mind the media were only doing their duty to the people of informing them of the shameful manner in which some of their representatives were behaving,” he said.

He said all proceedings in a Assembly must be freely telecast and reported so that the people, who are the supreme authority in a democracy, know how their representatives are behaving.

“There may, of course, be exceptional situations where this cannot be done. For example, in the Second World War many secret sessions of the House of Commons were held so that Nazi spies may not know the views of the British political leaders,” the chairman of the PCI said.

“But such secrecy can only be in exceptional situations. I fail to see what was the exceptional situation in Karnataka which could justify prohibiting media persons to report events in the House,” Katju said.

PTI