New Delhi: A tribunal should monitor the media and journalists must seek licenses to practise their profession, says the government’s action taken report (ATR) on Justice M S Liberhan commission’s findings.
"There is a dire need for a body on the lines of the Medical Council of India or the Bar Council of India which has a permanent tribunal which can entertain and decide complaints against individual members of the press corps or against newspapers, TV or radio channels as also media conglomerates," the ATR said.
The government has stated that it will ask the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and Ministry of Law to examine the desirability and feasibility of establishing a tribunal or a regulatory body.
The Commission has expressed concern that the Press Council of India as it exists today, has "no authority to hear complaints" on questionable reporting and punishing erring
journalists.
Liberhan has also recommended that a statutory body be set up to oversee the media in the country. "It is highly desirable that journalists ought to be granted licenses just like the practitioners of other learned professions and ought to be subject to disciplinary action, including suspension of the rights to work as journalists on grounds of proven professional misconduct," the report says.
The Justice Liberhan commission investigated the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.
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