Denies editing charge
New Delhi : With the controversy surrounding Doordarshan’s Narendra Modi-interview refusing to die down, Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar has said the issue related to the autonomy of the public broadcaster is in the public domain and added he and his team had been trying to put the house in order for the past two years.
“Our job is to put our house in order first, which the board and my team are trying so hard for nearly two years”, Sircar said.
Prasar Bharati supervises the functioning of Doordarshan and All India Radio. “Regarding autonomy, the issue is in public domain now and we have correspondence on each issue, with refusals, on record,” he said.
DD had on April 26 interviewed BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Modi at Gandhinagar and then telecast it the next day.
However, remarks made by Modi on Priyanka Gandhi and his claims of proximity with senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel were edited out by DD, but became public through the social media, triggering a row.
Sircar had himself written a letter to Prasar Bharati board members, saying that following the interview questions had been raised about the “impartiality” of the public broadcaster.
DD News which had telecast the interview had however maintained that “there was no deliberate editing or omission of any portion of the interview”. “The editing was done for technical reasons and during post production. There was no interference from any authority in the entire process,” it had said in a statement. –PTI
