Porvorim: Speaker of Goa State Legislative Assembly Dr Pramod Sawant today assured to consider the necessary modification to the draft media accreditation guidelines as proposed by the media fraternity.
Dr Sawant was speaking to media post meeting with Goa Editors’ Guild, who has proposed that the letter from Editor should be considered as final documents to ascertain the authenticity of the reporter and that only those media houses, which are registered with the Government, should be considered for Assembly coverage.
“There was little misunderstanding between media and Speaker office as we failed to mention that these are draft guidelines. We welcome all the suggestion and the same are under consideration,” Speaker said adding ‘before finalizing the guidelines, the same would be placed before Press Advisory Committee for approval’.
The media fraternity in the State was enraged with the rules for the accreditation of media organizations and their representatives covering proceedings of the assembly sessions. Senior journalists backed by Goa Union of Journalists (GUJ) had slammed the guidelines demanding its withdrawal.
However, the Speaker refused to withdraw the guidelines, while opening it for modification.
The Goa Editors’ Guild admitted that the whole issue had cropped up because some journalists were found to be using expired cards unauthorisedly to cover the assembly.
“We request that the Legislature Secretariat follows the approved list of the Directorate of Information and Publicity (DIP) for the process and trust the credential and judgment of the Editors or the media organizations accredited to the State government through DIP,” Chairman of Editors’ Guild Arun Sinha said in the press statement.
