ECI issues illustrations to handle suspected paid news

District Media Certification and Monitoring

Committee   to keep Tabs on Suspected Paid News:

October, 17 (Information Bureau): With a view to curbing the menace of “Paid News” during forthcoming Assembly elections the Election Commission of India has issued some illustrations to handle the suspected cases of paid news.

             Vadodara District Election Officer Vinod Rao, to ensure free and fair elections, has constituted the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee MCMC, that will not only monitor all the political advertisements that are to be aired on TV channels and cable network during the electoral process but also keep tabs on suspected paid news.

            The illustrations that the Election Commission of India has pointed out for MCMC to checking out suspected paid news are as follows:

·         Identical articles with photographs and headlines appearing in competing publications carrying by-lines of different authors around the same time,

·         On the same page of specific news papers, articles praising competing candidates claiming that both are likely to win the same election,

·         News item stating that one candidate is getting the support of each and every section of society and that he would win elections from the constituency,

·         News item favouring a candidate, not carrying any by-line,

·         News paper publishing a banner headline stating that a party/candidate is ready to create history in the state/constituency but not carrying any news item related to this headline,

·         News item saying that the good work done by a Party/Candidate had marginalized the electoral prospects of the other party/candidate in the state with each and every sentence of the news item in favour of the party candidate,

·         There are instances of fixed size news items, each say of a length of 125-150 words with double-column photo. News items are seldom written in such a rigid format and size whereas advertisements are most often,

·         In specific news papers, multiple font types and multiple drop case styles were noticed within the same page of a single news paper. This happened because just about everything- the layouts fonts, printouts, photographs – was provided by candidates who had paid for slots in the pages of the news papers.

The MCMC will watch such news like a hawk and shall intimate the Returning Officer for issue of notices to candidates for inclusion of actual expenditure on the published matter or notional expenditure in their election expenses account, either based on or irrespective of whether the candidate actually has paid or not to the news paper. A copy of the notice shall also be marked to Expenditure Observer.

However the ECI has expected that the candidates /political parties would refrain from the malpractice of paid news.