ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) on Monday assured the Supreme Court that a team of experts will soon inspect private television channels to ensure that time delaying mechanism is put in place to block airing of undesirable and offending programmes or spoken words.

The assurance was held out before a two-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Dost Mohammad Khan that had taken up a petition instituted by the media regulator challenging the June 28 Sindh High Court’s suspension of its notification to ban televangelist and talk show host Aamir Liaquat from hosting his Ramazan show ‘Inam Ghar’ at a private television network for three days.

It came to the notice of the bench during the proceedings that a number of private television channels, including the channel hosting Inam Ghar, have not yet installed the censoring device known as time delaying mechanism to cut off and expunge offending part of live shows or programmes to bring it in conformity with Pemra rules.

Under Clause 3.9 of Terms and Conditions of the Licence, a television channel is obliged to deploy time delaying mechanism during live programmes so that better editorial control can be exercised by the channel in case of spontaneous comments made during live transmission.

Court regrets leniency shown towards open talk for derailment of the democratic set-up

Pemra Chairman Absar Alam along with his counsel Kashif Hanif appeared before the Supreme Court on Monday and submitted a compact disc (CD) containing offending contents of the show aired by the television channel in its show of June 13.

During the proceedings, the court regretted the leniency shown towards open talks for derailment of the democratic set-up in the country in talk shows and also cited the recent Lahore episode regarding protocol mess up when the security detail of a VIP had blocked and harassed the sister of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan.

While the television channels created hype throughout the day on the incident, none of them tendered an apology when facts were revealed, the court regretted, adding that at least the news should be aired after thorough research and investigation.

The Supreme Court, however, distanced itself from interfering on the matter at this stage on the grounds that Pemra’s petition has become infructuous because a very narrow margin of time has left, especially when the matter was already fixed for hearing for Monday before the SHC.

But the Supreme Court allowed Pemra to investigate or inquire into the allegations the regulatory body had levelled in its petition by the Council of Complaint (CoC) and after receiving its recommendations the competent authority (Pemra) will look into while complying with all rules and provisions of the law.

The charges levelled by the authority in its petition, the court said, fell within the domain of Pemra and, therefore, it should proceed with the same according to the law and rules and conclude the same within a month. The inquiry initiated by Pemra should commence after Eid holidays.

Pemra will also consider, the order said, the effect of the apology to be tendered publicly by the channel and through print media.

In its petition, the regulator argued that the footage of a girl who has committed a suicide was aired on June 13 during the Ramazan show and on the same day at 7.52pm abusive remarks of a participant was also broadcast against which the authority received multiple complaints and accordingly show caused the channel for contravening provisions of Pemra laws.

The June 14 show cause was accordingly replied and the matter was placed before the CoC constituted under Section 26 of the Pemra Ordinance which accordingly recommended suspension of the show for three days from June 28 to 30.

The petition argued that the high court was not justified in granting ad-interim stay without notice to Pemra in a case where the particular television channel had been consistently violating Pemra laws.

The conduct of the channel can be ascertained from the facts that on many counts, the regulatory body has passed punitive order against the channel, the petition said, adding that the high court should have issued notice to Pemra before granting suspension of its order.

Published in Dawn, July 5th, 2016