Committees monitoring television content asked to also oversee private radio stations

New Delhi: The Centre has asked states and Union Territories to monitor the content aired by private FM and community radio stations through the existing committees set up to keep a watch on television broadcast. [caption id=“attachment_1799815” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Courtesy: Flickr[/caption] As of April 2017, state and district level monitoring committees have been set up in 19 states, five UTs and 327 districts for monitoring the content telecast on private satellite channels. “It has been decided that these committees will be henceforth authorised to monitor the content broadcast on private FM, community radio stations in addition to private satellite TV channels,“additional secretary in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry Jayashree Mukherjee said in a letter to all states and UTs. “I request you to constitute these state and district-level monitoring committees wherever these have not been set up so far and to effectively monitor all types of content,” she added. FM channels and community radio stations are required to follow the All India Radio Broadcast Code, which bars criticism of friendly countries, attack on religions and communities and anything obscene and defamatory etc. While pronouncing the judgement in a case, the Supreme Court had in January advised the government to formalise the existing complaint redressal mechanism for content monitoring of private satellite TV channels and to finalise a similar framework for private radio stations as well. Mukherjee said any violations would be acted upon by the authorised officers or brought to the notice of the ministry for taking necessary action.