Fit credentials for the PCI

IN Media Watch Briefs | 20/06/2015

The News Minute reports that one of the new appointees to the Press Council, Karnataka BJP MP Pratap Simha, has interesting credentials. On May 7 this year a journalist had lodged a police complaint against him for threatening to "finish him off" after he did a story on Simha's Facebook post empathising with Salman Khan. The journalist is with the News Karnataka website. But Simha has other credentials which no doubt counted with those who appoint Press Council members--as a journalist with Vijaya Karnataka he wrote a column "which espoused Hindutva and was fiercely critical of anyone who opposed it".

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Amazon resisting voluntary censorship

The new term for self censorship is voluntary censorship, as proposed by companies like Netflix and Hotstar. ET reports that streaming video service Amazon Prime is opposing a move by its peers to adopt a voluntary censorship code in anticipation of the Indian government coming up with its own rules. Amazon is resisting because it fears that it may alienate paying subscribers.

Let the games begin

Clearly, the run to the 2019 elections is on. A journalist received a call from someone saying they were from Aajtak channel and were conducting a survey, asking whom she was going to vote for in 2019. On being told that her vote was secret, the caller assumed she wasn't going to vote for 'Modiji'. The caller, a woman, also didn't identify herself. A month or two earlier the same journalist received a call, this time from a man, asking if she was going to vote for the BSP.