Withdraw FIR against Editors Guild chief: PCI

NT Bureau, Agencies

New Delhi: The Press Club of India on Monday condemned the registration of an FIR against three members of a fact-finding committee of the Editors Guild of India along with its chief who had examined media coverage of the ethnic violence in Manipur.

"It is a case of shooting the messenger rather than taking measures to restore peace in the state. We demand that the FIR against Editors Guild of India (EGI) president Seema Mustafa and the three members be withdrawn immediately," the Press Club of India (PCI) said in a statement here.

The Manipur Police booked the four for allegedly trying to create more clashes in the state rocked by ethnic strife for nearly four months.

The PCI claimed that the Manipur police invoked Section 66A of the Information and Technology Act even though the provision has been struck down by the Supreme Court.

"This is a strong-arm tactic by the state government which amounts to intimidation of the apex media body of the country," it said.

In its report on the media coverage of the ethnic violence in Manipur, the Guild said journalists in the north eastern state wrote one-sided reports, internet ban impacted their ability to communicate with each other, and the state government played a partisan role in the ethnic conflict.

The three-member factfinding team, comprising EGI members Seema Guha, Bharat Bhushan and Sanjay Kapoor, reported that the media in Manipur seemed to have become 'Meitei media' with editors consulting each other and agreeing on a common narrative to report an incident.