Ministry of Defence asks media to get content verified by Army before publishing it

Left red-faced with the publication of news items contradicting previous claims of the Indian army that the terrorists involved in Uri attack carried weapons of “Pakistani markings”, the Indian government has introduced unprecedented media gags.

In a new direction to the media, the Ministry of Defence of India has issued a new direction to editors, stating that “all contents relating to the Indian Army, irrespective of ‘source’ of inputs, and intended to be published, should be pre-verified from the offices of media centres in commands and corps HQ or from this office through your defence correspondents”.

The MoD was responding to a story published in the Indian Express on September 21 which refuted the claim made by Lt Gen Ranbir Singh, Director General of Military Operations (DGMO), during interviews to journalists that the weapons recovered from the four slain terrorists who killed 18 Indian soldiers at Uri on September 18 bore “Pakistani markings”.

Writing in the Indian Express, Sagnik Chowdhury and Praveen Swami had reported, “Four Kalashnikov rifles used by the terrorists, and handed over by the military to investigators Monday, bore no markings or insignia of any kind, sources familiar with the ongoing investigation said. There were also no military markings on barrel-fired grenades destroyed by the Army Monday, or on launchers fitted on the Kalashnikovs”.

Indian MoD’s demand has no legal basis – no government body has the right to censor or screen news before it is published, and freedom of the press is enshrined in the law via the constitutional right to free speech.

Israel is the only country with an otherwise unrestricted media where all media outlets – including bloggers and foreign journalists based there – are subject to a military censor when it comes to the reporting of news about Israeli military matters. Military censorship in Israel began in the 1960s as part of an understanding between the army and the media houses but eventually got established as a legal prerogative.

Though the defence ministry now says the Indian DGMO never made this claim – and cites the formal press release he had issued on the evening September 18 to buttress its point, the fact of the matter is that several media outlets had quoted Indian DGMO as saying so to TV channels for more than a day without the MoD or General Singh feeling the need to issue a denial.

Indian media has reported that not only has the director, media in the MoD, Abhijit Mitra – who is a serving colonel in the Indian army – now demanded that the newspaper “publish an errata and apology for having published a report full of falsehood” but that henceforth it submit reports on the army to be “pre-verified” by the relevant corps or command media office.