Keep media out of Lokpal ambit: Editors Guild to House panel

A delegation of the Editors Guild of India,appearing before a parliamentary committee,made a strong plea for keeping the media out of the ambit of the proposed Lokpal.

A delegation of the Editors Guild of India,appearing before a parliamentary committee,on Friday made a strong plea for keeping the media out of the ambit of the proposed Lokpal.

Sources said Guild president T N Ninan,in his presentation before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel,Law and Justice,argued that there was a fundamental difference between the media and state players,which were sought to be regulated through the Lokpal.

The media,he pointed out,was a private body and not a state entity. It did not live off the tax-payers money,he stressed.

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He also drew the committees attention to the freedom which the media in India enjoyed. The proposed measure should not be even considered vis-a-vis the media,he sadded.

Ninan,chairman and editorial director of the Business Standard,was accompanied by senior journalists Coomi Kapoor and Suresh Bafna.

Sources said committee chairman Abhishek Manu Singhvi told the Guild representatives that the panel was not looking at the editorial content of the media. He said the committee was looking at business holdings because media houses also got land at subsidised rates. The panel wanted those points answered,Singhvi reportedly added.

Ninan told the committee that the Guild team did not have anything to say as far as other issues relating to the Lokpal Bill were concerned. Members of the Guild,he maintained,held different views about them.

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