PCI condemns Prasar Bharti’s move against PTI

NEW DELHI: The Press Club of India (PCI) has on Tuesday condemned India's public service broadcaster Prasar Bharati's move to act against news agency PTI for carrying an interview of China's ambassador to India recently.

“The government gives the impression of working for the dismemberment of the Press Trust of India (PTI), India's premier news agency which has established a name for itself for being a professional news establishment. A demolition exercise of such magnitude has been undertaken through its proxy, Prasar Bharati,” the PCI said in its statement.

“PTI is as old as independent India and through its existence has been a no-profit company on whose Board sit representatives of the country's leading independent (private) news organisations. It has maintained a conscious balance in its news coverage. As such, it enjoys credibility as a leading media outfit that serves newspapers and other news organisations in the farflung corners of India who are unable to post correspondents around the country and the world,” the Press Club of India added.

“Prasar Bharati, on the other hand, has failed to live up to its mandate of being India's public service broadcaster, the mandate given to it by the Act of Parliament through which it was created in 1997. It has become a lackey of the Union government, though it is technically autonomous and, as such, controls AIR and Doordarshan,” the PCI statement said.