During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, Indrajeet Ghorpade, a 32-year-old information technology engineer and social worker, as he calls himself, watched a lot of news and was shocked by the Islamophobia and misinformation in the pandemic coverage.

In 2020, Ghorpade filed his first complaint with the News Broadcasting Digital Standards Authority (NBDSA), which administers the Code of Ethics and Broadcasting Standards for the Delhi and Noida-based News Broadcasters & Digital Association, a collective of 125 news and current affairs channels in India, established in 2007. The authority consists of a chairperson, who's an eminent jurist, and eight other members nominated by the board of the association, including four broadcast-media editors.

Since then, Ghorpade has filed nearly 50 complaints revealing how channels have violated the NBDSA's code of ethics and guidelines.

“Racial and religious stereotyping should be avoided,” the guidelines say. “Caution should be exercised in reporting content which denigrates or is likely to offend the sensitivities of any racial or religious group or that may create religious intolerance or disharmony.”

Some of the news shows Ghorpade filed complaints against included the “media trial” of activist Umar Khalid, calling protesting farmers Khalistanis, and comparing Muslim women protesters to “terrorists”.

In an interview with Article 14, Ghorpade said that the NBDSA has delivered an order against the news channels in close to 90% of his complaints, issuing warnings, ordering the programmes to be removed from digital platforms, and, in some instances, fining them up to Rs 100,000.

Last month, Ghorpade had four significant victories.

The complaints he filed led to the NBDSA fining two Hindi channels, Times Now Navbharat and News18 India, Rs 100,000 and Rs 50,000, respectively, for using the word “love jihad” in the context of the Shraddha Walker murder case. Walker’s live-in partner, a Muslim, was charged with murdering her. They were also ordered to remove their programmes from digital platforms.



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