As the press is a primary instrument in the creation of public opinion, journalists should regard their calling as a trust and be eager to serve and guard their public interests.
In the discharge of their duties, journalists should attach due value to fundamental, human and social rights and shalI hold good faith and fair play in news reports and comments as essential professional obligations.
Journalists should observe special restraint in reports and comments dealing with tensions, likely to lead, or leading to civil disorder.
(a) Journalists shall particularly observe maximum restraint in publishing reports and comments relating to communal tension, incidents, riots, incipient situations likely to lead to communal disturbances. The identification of communities which may lead to chain reactions should be avoided.
(b) Journalists should endeavour at an rimes to promote the unity of the country and nation, pride in the country, its people, its achievements and its strength in diversity. Journalists should be most circumspect in dealing with movements and ideas which promote regionalism at the cost of national unity.
(c) Any reportage on ideas of fresh partition and secessionism must be treated with the greatest caution. Any comment likely to give comfort to the proponents of such ideas and further their interests should be avoided. The integrity of the country and of Indian peoples must be considered sacrosanct and beyond question.
Journalists should endeavour to ensure that information disseminated is factually accurate. No fact shall be distorted or the essential facts deliberately omitted. No information known to be false shall be published.
Responsibility shall be assumed for all information and comments published. If responsibility is disclaimed, this will be explicitly stated.
Confidences shall always be respected. Professional secrecy must be preserved.
Any report found to be inaccurate and any comment on inaccurate reports shall be voluntarily rectified. It shall be obligatory to give fair publicity to a correlation of contradiction when a report published is shown to be false or inaccurate in material particulars.
Journalists shall not exploit their status for non-journalistic purposes.
Journalists shall not allow personal interest to influence professional conduct.
There is nothing so unworthy as the acceptance or demand of a bribe or inducement for the exercise by a journalist of his power to give or deny publicity to news or comments.
Freedom in the honest collection and publication of news and facts and the rights of their comments and criticism and principIes which every journalist should always defend.
Journalists shall be very conscious of their obligation to their fellows in the profession and shall not seek to deprive feIIow-journalists of their livelihood by unfair means.
The carrying on of personal controversies in the press in which no public interest is involved shall be regarded as derogatory to the dignity of the profession.
It is unprofessional to give currency to rumours or loose talk affecting the private life of individuals. Even verifiable news affecting the private life of individuals shall not be published unless the public interest as distinguished from public curiosity demands its publication.
15.The Press shall refrain from publishing matters likely to encourage vice and crime.
