ECI issues
illustrations to
handle suspected paid news
District Media Certification and Monitoring
Committee to keep Tabs
on Suspected Paid News:
October, 17 (Information Bureau): With a view to curbing the menace of “Paid News”
during forthcoming
Assembly
elections the Election Commission of India has issued some illustrations to handle
the suspected cases of paid news.
Vadodara District Election
Officer
Vinod Rao, to ensure
free and fair elections, has constituted
the Media Certification and Monitoring
Committee
MCMC, that will not only
monitor all the political
advertisements that are to be
aired on TV channels and cable
network during
the electoral
process but
also keep tabs on
suspected paid news.
The
illustrations that the Election Commission of India has pointed out for MCMC to checking out suspected paid news are as follows:
·
Identical articles
with photographs and headlines appearing in competing publications carrying
by-lines of different authors around the same time,
·
On the same page of specific news
papers, articles praising competing candidates claiming that both are likely to win the same election,
·
News item stating that
one candidate
is getting the support of each
and every section of society and that he would win elections from the constituency,
·
News item favouring a
candidate, not carrying any by-line,
·
News paper
publishing a banner
headline stating that a party/candidate is ready to create history in the
state/constituency but not carrying any news item
related to
this headline,
·
News item saying that
the good work done by a Party/Candidate
had marginalized the electoral prospects of the other
party/candidate in the state with each and
every sentence
of the news item in favour of the
party candidate,
·
There are instances of fixed size news
items, each say of a length of 125-150 words with
double-column photo. News items are seldom written in such a rigid format
and size whereas advertisements
are most often,
·
In specific news
papers, multiple
font types and multiple drop case
styles were noticed within the same page of a single news
paper. This happened because just about
everything- the layouts fonts, printouts, photographs – was provided by
candidates who had paid
for slots in the pages of the
news papers.
The MCMC will
watch such news like a hawk and shall intimate the Returning Officer
for
issue of notices to candidates for inclusion of actual
expenditure
on the published matter or notional
expenditure in their election expenses account, either based on or irrespective of
whether the candidate actually
has paid
or not to the news paper. A copy of the notice
shall also be marked to Expenditure Observer.
However the
ECI has expected
that the candidates /political parties would refrain from the malpractice of paid news.
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