Editor to be held responsible in cases of false reporting: SC

First Published: Tue, Mar 12 2013. 01 05 AM IST

 

 A file photo of the Supreme Court. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint

 

New Delhi: The editor of a newspaper shall be responsible in any civil or criminal case filed against it for publishing offensive news reports, the Supreme Court held on Monday. A bench of justices C.K. Prasad and V.G. Gowda said the editor controls the selection of matter that is published and cannot be exempted from proceedings on the ground that the alleged offensive news was published without his permission.

“From the scheme of the Press and Registration of Books Act, it is evident that it is the editor who controls the selection of the matter that is published in a newspaper. Further, every copy of the newspaper is required to contain the names of the owner and the editor and once the name of the editor is shown, he shall be held responsible in any civil and criminal proceeding,” the bench said.

The court dismissed the plea of the editor of Gujarati daily Sandesh who sought quashing of proceedings against him on the ground that he was not responsible for the publication of a defamatory story in 1999 as the decision to publish it was taken by the resident editor.

“A news item has the potentiality of bringing doom’s day for an individual. The editor controls the selection of the matter that is published. Therefore, he has to keep a careful eye on the selection. Editors have to take responsibility of everything they publish...,” the bench said.

The court passed the order on an appeal filed by a former executive magistrate in Vadodara who approached the apex court against the Gujarat high court’s verdict quashing proceedings against the editor. The magistrate had filed a complaint against the editor and resident editor of the daily for publishing an allegedly false news about his “illicit relations with the wife of a doctor” in 1999.

“At this stage, it is impermissible to go into the truthfulness or otherwise of the allegation and one has to proceed on a footing that the allegation made is true. Hence, the conclusion reached by the high court that there is nothing in the complaint to suggest that the petitioner (editor) was aware of the offending news item being published or that he had any role to play in the selection of such item...is palpably wrong,” the bench said.

“On the face of it, seems pretty obvious. Under the PRB Act, the designated editor is ‘responsible’ for all content, false, offensive or otherwise,” said Outlook editor Krishna Prasad.

“However, rulings like these show courts have not fully comprehended the changed reality of newsrooms, where it is physically impossible for any one individual editor to have checked and verified every word on every page. Some of our press laws were made in pre-independent India...when newspapers were two or four pages long. Surely, they are unrealistic in the modern era?” said Prasad.

“That doesn’t mean an editor should not be responsible but that there is a crying need for greater nuance,” he added.

Another editor of a newspaper, who had not read the judgement, and who didn’t want to be named, said, “We may be attaching too much importance to this. This probably takes into account the fact that often editors pass the blame to reporters and hyphenated editors... What it says is that the editor should be responsible.”

 

ADITYA KUMAR SINGH

PGDM 2ND SEM