Syed Ali Mujtaba chennai
Negative reporting is more dangerous than Fake News. That’s what has happened to the news item erroneously being reported that Supreme Court has refused to hear the petition to reign in the media outlets demonizing Tablighi Jamaat linking it to the spread of Covid 19 and has dismissed the case.
This actually is a case of misrepresentation of the news in its reportage. This negative introduction of ‘declining interim order’ has led to all the confusion.
Many Muslims assumed that the Apex Court is supportive of the media campaign going on against the Muslims and remains indifferent towards the sensitivities of the minorities.
All such apprehensions are unfounded, if we carefully go through the proceedings of the case on Monday April 13, 2020.
The fact is the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the petitions filed by the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind and others seeking a direction to stop the media from communalizing the Tablighi Jamaat incident linking it to COVID-19 infection.
The Apex Court has asked the petitioners to impaled the Press Council of India (PCI) as a party to the case and posted it for hearing after two weeks.
A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde, Justices L Nageswara Rao and M M Shantanagoudar which heard the matter through video-conference, observed that it would not pass any interim order at this stage of the case without the Press Council of India (PCI) being impaled in the case.
At this stage “We will not gag the press.” “We want to make solid long term measures about the news items as it is a question of larger reporting. Once we take cognizance people will understand,” the bench observed.
In such case all the negativity that is circulated about the Supreme Court’s stand on this case is all rubbish. We should not judge into conclusion by reading the headline or the intro, as it could be misleading, as it happened in this case. (www.siyasat.net is Ahmedabad based website)
