As per the reports of NDTV, India’s Chief Justice NV Ramana strongly criticised the electronic and social media on Saturday. While delivering a speech at a public lecture, he said that electronic and social media are doing disservice to democracy and running kangaroo courts.
CJI N V Raman Speech
In his public speech in Ranchi, Jharkhand, CJI NV Ramana said, “Of late, we see media running kangaroo courts, at times on issues even experienced judges find difficult to decide. Ill-informed & agenda driven debates on issues involving justice delivery are proving to be detrimental to health of democracy.”
If judges do not react immediately, most of them mistake them to be a weakness or helplessness of the judges. He slammed the media trials organised on the electronic and social media.
Also added that the media has new tools to use but they are unable to differentiate between the right and the wrong, bad and good, real and fake. He condemned media trials to be guiding factors in taking decisions in cases.
CJI expressed his concerned that ill-informed and agenda driven debates on the justice delivered are detrimental to the health of democracy. The biased views propagated by the media are influencing the people . In fact, this weakens democracy and harms the system, which in turn affects the justice delivery.
He also spoke about the repercussions of overstepping and breaching the responsibility by the media. He added that this would take democracy two steps backwards.
Talking about the accountability of the media, he said, print media has a certain degree of accountability. However, electronic media has zero accountability and social media is still worse.
The CJI urges media to self-regulate and measure their words and behave responsibly. Furthermore, he asked the electronic media to use their voice to educate people and energise nation.
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