Earlier this year, according to a submission to the British broadcast regulator Ofcom, Arnab Goswami’s Republic Bharat team conducted “a f...
Earlier this year, according to a submission to the British broadcast regulator Ofcom, Arnab Goswami’s Republic Bharat team conducted “a full briefing to senior management and the production team on hate speech and how to identify pejorative statements”.
Anyone familiar with Goswami’s TV shows knows that he and has team have no difficulty identifying such content. What his channels find much harder is keeping this kind of material off the air.
This was the conclusion of British authorities too. It earned the pro-Bharatiya Janata Party Republic Bharat a sanction for a programme that contained “uncontextualised hate speech” and “highly offensive” content. The regulator’s initial findings alone had prompted Goswami’s channel to air an apology “279 times”, with a request that the regulator not to take any further action.
On Wednesday, Ofcom announced that it was imposing a financial penalty of 20,000 pounds – Rs 20 lakh – on the TV channel.
“Having regard to all the circumstances... including the need to achieve an appropriate level of deterrence and the particularly serious nature of the Code breaches in this case, and all the representations to date from the Licensee, Ofcom’s decision is that an appropriate and proportionate sanction would be a financial penalty of £20,000,” the regulator said in its...
