Centre must not be allowed to abuse powers to curb critical voices: Media One News

14 February 2022

In early February, the Malayalam news channel MediaOne News went off air after the ministry of home affairs refused security clearance for renewal of the channel’s licence. A statement by the organisation is reproduced below:

MediaOne News, a Kerala-based news and current affairs TV channel, suddenly and arbitrarily had its Uplinking & Downlinking license revoked by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting citing unspecified ‘national security’ concerns raised by the Ministry of Home Affairs. MediaOne News was originally granted a license for ten years on 30.09.2011 and has been operating as a Malayalam language news channel for the last nine years. Its application for a renewal of its license was rejected by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting because of the denial of security clearance by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on 31st January 2022 without specifying any concrete reasons and it has subsequently been off-air. 

MediaOne News is a very popular one in the state and has won many awards and accolades including that of the State Government. It has got a TV viewership of 15.4 million inside India and 3.2 million outside India. In digital platforms the viewership is even bigger like 1.8 billion inside India and 103.08 million outside India.

Keywords: Freedom of Press Indian journalism Indian media
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