Should the Judges Watch News? Indian Media and Issues in Jurisprudence

CENTRE FOR MEDIA STUDIES School Of Social Sciences Jawaharlal Nehru University a Public lecture by Dr. Abhijit Roy Associate Professor, Dept. of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, Calcutta on Should the Judges Watch News? Indian Media and Issues in Jurisprudence DATE: 22nd January 2015 Abstract : In the 'Law Commission of India 200th Report on Trial by Media' (August, 2006), there was a section titled 'Do publications in the media subconsciously affect the Judges?' It was only a year back that the Supreme Court, sentencing Mohammad Afzal Guru to death, said that the judgment was to satisfy "the collective conscience of the society". Many have acknowledged that Afzal Guru's death sentence and finally capital punishment in February 2013 was greatly influenced by public opinion as represented by the media through interfaces like the sms-poll. This paper would try to locate the broader historical context of such debates on the vulnerability of jurisprudence to the idea of 'community justice' in the era of a boom in privately-owned satellite television news. About the speaker : Abhijit Roy is Associate Professor at the Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, Calcutta. A member of the editorial board of Journal of the Moving Image, Roy has published widely on television, popular culture and politics. Roy has recently co-edited Channeling Cultures: Television Studies from India (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2014) and earlier wrote a book on Sergei Eisenstein (Papyrus, Calcutta, 2004). His recent articles include 'The Border Within: India and Manipur' in Beyond Borders ed. John Hutnyk (Pavement Books, London, 2012), 'A Reflexive Turn in Television Studies? Conjectures from South Asia' in Television at Large in South Asia eds. Shanti Kumar and Aswin Punathambekar (Routledge India, 2013) and 'Reading Space: Daftaripara' inStrangely Beloved: Writings on Calcutta ed. Nilanjana Gupta (Rupa/Raintree, New Delhi, 2014).