PRESS COUNCIL OF INDIA

NORMS OF JOURNALISTIC CONDUCT

CONTENTS
PREFACE
PART A : Principles and Ethics
1. Accuaracy and fairness
2. Pre-publication verification
3. Caution against defamatory wrintings
4. Parameters of the right of the press to comment
on the acts and conduct of public officials
5. Criticism of public figures/music reviews
6. Right to privacy
7. Privacy of public figures
8. Recording interviews and phone conversation
9. Conjecture, comment and fact
10. Newspapers to eschew suggestive guilt
11. Reporting-proceedings of legislature
12. Caution in criticizing judicial acts
13. Right to reply
14. Letters to editor
15. Editors discretion
16. Corrections
17. Obscenity and vulgarity to be eschewed
18. Glorification/encouragement of social evils to
be eschewed
19. Violence not to be glorified
20. Covering communal disputes/clashes
21. Headings not to be sensational/provocative and
must justify the matter printed under them
22. Caste, religion or community references
23. Paramount national interest
24. Foreign relations
25. Newspaper may expose misuse of diplomatic
Immunity
26. Investigative journalism, its norms and
Parameters
27. Confidence to be respected
28. Newspapers to avoid crass commercialism
29. Fraudulent activities
30. Professional misconduct
31. Professional rivalry
32. Plagiarism
33. Unauthorised lifting of news
34. Illegal reproduction
35. Non-return of unsolicited material
36. Advertisements
37. Internal Disputes
38. Astrological Prediction
39. Reporting on Natural Calamities
40. HIV/AIDS and the Media-DO’s and DON’TS
41. Trial by Media
42. Norms for Photo Journalism

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PART B: Guidelines on specific issues

a) Norms for observance by the press in the wake of

Communal disturbances
b) Coverage of handouts of Militants/Terrorists-
Guiding Principles 1991-1992
c) HIV/AIDS and the Media
d) Financial Journalism
e) Election Reporting
f) Allotment of Houses to Journalists
g) Undue Favours to Journalists
h) Right to privacy –Public Figures and the press
i) Model Guidelines For publishing Overseas
Advertisement In Accordance With Emigration Act
1983
j) Study Report- Working Journalists Act vis-à-vis
Appointment of Journalists on Contract

PART C: Laws relating to the press

PART D: Press Council’s Powers, Practices and
Procedures