TLA serves legal notice to media houses for misreporting on Dalai Lama incident

By Tenzin Nyidon

DHARAMSHALA, April 18: Dharamshala-based Tibetan Legal Association (TLA) on Monday served legal notices to the Indian news agencies Hindustan Times, NDTV, Times of India and India Today urging them to remove the defamatory articles and videos on His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama’s playful interaction with a young Indian boy in February.

The defamatory news pieces published by these Indian English language-based newspapers on April 10^th highlighted and circulated a video clip of few seconds from His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s playful banter with the young Indian boy, which shows an edited clip at the exact moment after the statement “suck my tongue” and morphed the boy’s image suggesting an “obscene and lewd scene” thus, changing the narrative, the legal notice stated. 

TLA in their letter cited the Code of Ethics that the news agencies has violated; under the guidelines of the Digital Newspaper Publishers Association (DNPA), Code 3, 5, 7, and 10 stated, “Accuracy, Transparency and Fairness. Defamation should be avoided. Take down, delete or edit if a news report or article is found to contain false or inaccurate information. Special care and caution must be exercised at all times reporting matters related to communal or religious disputes/clashes after verification of facts and should be presented with due caution.” Other Code of Ethics under the Norms of Journalistic Conduct of 2022 highlighted Norm 34 (i), ‘PRE-PUBLICATION VERIFICATION’ of a report or articles of a public interest containing comments against a citizen, the editor should check with due care from other authentic sources. 

The legal association has given three days’ notice to the media houses to ‘withdraw, delete and remove’ the malicious tailored, tampered and edited clip from all other platforms and demanded apology. The refusal to comply would result in issuing a complaint to the apex press body in India, the press council of India, followed by necessary legal actions, TLA said.