The Ministry of Information & Broadcasting has sent a show cause notice to 13 television news channels for broadcasting the media briefing of Pakistan Army spokesperson Major General Asif Ghafoor on February 22. Major General Ghafoor had addressed a press conference at Rawalpindi where he said Pakistan wasn’t preparing for war but had the “right to respond” to India’s “preparations of war”.

The show cause notice to Tiranga TV said it came to the ministry’s notice that the channel had broadcast the briefing even though the ministry had released an advisory on February 14 warning private channels to be cautious about content following the Pulwama attack. It claimed Tiranga had shown the media briefing for 20 minutes and 45 seconds with “no intervention” by the channel on the “correctness or otherwise of the claims” made in the briefing.

In doing so, the notice said Tiranga had violated Rules6[1](e) and 6[1][h] of the Programming Code which had been mentioned in the advisory: carrying a programme likely to “encourage or incite violence or … anything against maintenance of law and order or which promotes anti-national attitudes”, and carrying a programme “which contains anything affecting the integrity of the Nation”.

Similar notices have reportedly been sent to 12 other news channels too.

The show cause notice to Tiranga was addressed to the managing director of Veecon Media & Broadcasting Pvt Ltd. The president of Veecon, Deepak Choudhry, sent this response to Newslaundry: “We were surprised to receive the notice from the I and B ministry. Like all Indians, we are outraged by the terror attack in Pulwama and stand firmly with the armed forces. Our programming has focused on how Pakistan must pay for its patronage of terrorism. The press conference of the Pakistan army spokesman was only carried as part of overall news coverage. We do not subscribe to his views at all and many of our special programs explicitly countered his views. That said, we wonder if we are being targeted. There are channels that have done big interviews with Pervez Musharraf, who was responsible for Kargil, as well as Sheikh Rashid, a known India baiter. These channels have not received any notice. In our channel, we have not been calling Pakistani guests for these discussions at all.”

Here is a copy of the show cause notice: