- Title: INDIA: JOURNALISTS GO BACK TO WORK AFTER ONE-DAY STRIKE PROTEST AT NEW PRESS LAW
- Date: 8th September 1982
- Summary: 1. GV INTERIOR Newsdesk at Times of India with journalists at teleprinters and typewriters (5 shots) 0.19 2. GVS Newspaper printing press producing the times and papers being sorted (5 shots) 0.42 3. SV J.D. Singh, special correspondent of Times of India speaking (English SOT) 1.24 4. GV Paper rolling off presses 1.35 5. GV Papers being stacked in sorting room as customers line up for first edition ( 2 shots) 1.49 6. GV Paper delivery boys running through streets of Delhi (2 shots) 2.08 SPEECH (TRANSCRIPT) SEQUENCE 3: J.D. SINGH:"The most injurious par of these amendments is that an ordinary magistrate will have power to issue a warrant of arrest against the journalist, put him in prison for sic months without trial and who is to determine what is scurrilous writing or not. Now, literary pundits have deferred in their definition of what is obscene, what is objective, what is scurrilous writing, and here the power is being given to a very ordinary magistrate to decide what is scurrilous writing and therefore the fear entertained be most of the journalists is that this power will be misused by the magistrates and a kind if Damocles sword will be hanging over the journalists for all time to come". InitialsPW/PM Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 23rd September 1982 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: DELHI, INDIA
- Country: India
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA6KJ37LS9UBR38ZEA1UPMEHV5Z
- Story Text: DELHI, INDIA
Journalists in India have returned to work after what they describe as a near totally effective one-day strike on September 3. The stoppage was in near protest at new press laws. The Federation of Working Journalists said that newspapers and broadcasting services in Delhi were nearly completely shutdown. The city's main papers, the Times on India, the Patriot and the Milap and the leading news agency, the Press Trust of India, were not working. The proposed legislation which prompted the action is a bill before the Bihar State assembly which would make it an offence to write anything deemed scurrilous or amounting to blackmail. The journalists said it would stifle effective or political opposition. Special correspondent of the Times of India, J.D. Singh, said its worst effect would be to give ordinary magistrates the power to put a journalist in prison for six months without trial. Printers and writers at the Times were back at work on September 4 and regular customers seemed more eager than usual to catch up with the news they'd missed.
<strong>Source: REUTERS - PREM PRAKASH</strong> - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
