Checks & Balances

After the Bombay High Court pulled up the media for being highly polarised in its coverage of the Rajput case, the News Broadcasting Standards Authority directed four channels to air their apologies

- Abhilash Kumar Singh

THE right to fair trial and investigation is part of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India and every citizen enjoys these rights. But these rights are usually hampered now by media trials. It is the basic principle of criminal jurisprudence that “every accused is presumed to be innocent unless the guilt is proved”. However, due to the media trial, the accused person against whom a matter is pending is labelled a criminal even before the final verdict of the court. This leads to his mental suffering and image assassination.

The most recent case was the sensational death of actor Sushant Singh Raj put wherein it was alleged by the media that the investigating agency mishandled this case of unnatural death. The media aired the entire story in a manner that led the general public to believe what was hypothetically narrated. Such reporting brought undue pressure in the course of fair investigation and trial. The media, therefore, is conducting a parallel investigation and trial.

On October 23, 2020, while listening to a bunch of PILs seeking restraining orders against the trial by the media in this case, a division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Girish S Kulkarni of the Bombay High Court observed that journalists today had lost their neutrality and the media had become “highly polarised”.

The Court’s remarks came after the submissions made by Advocate Ankit Lohia, counsel for Zee News, that the channel was not guilty of the allegations made by the petitioners and that there was no need for government interference in the functioning of channels.