Gay rights groups in India are demanding a public apology and are also considering legal action after a TV channel in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad broadcast a nearly 7-minute long news story that outed close to a dozen men who had their photographs on a gay personals website.
The Telugu-language report, which ran with a headline roughly translated as “Gay culture rampant in Hyderabad,” showed covertly filmed scenes of men in gay dance clubs as well as photos and other personal information displayed on the online profiles of local gay men.
The video by TV9 also featured two recorded telephone conversations between the reporter and two men who had listed their phone numbers on the website. The men, whose profile photographs were shown on screen, were asked to reveal their names, occupations, university, sexual preferences and where they live.
Accompanied by suspenseful music, their reporter observed that "gay culture in Hyderabad is increasing drastically" as "boys pursuing boys has become fashionable," according to an English translation being circulated. Another reporter declared that white-collar workers and highly qualified students were becoming “slaves to a lifestyle which is against the ‘natural way.’”
Although consensual sexual relations between men was decriminalised by the Delhi High Court in 2009, homosexuality is largely regarded to be a taboo.
India’s Ndtv.com reported today that one of the young men who was outed in the video had allegedly tried to commit suicide after his parents saw him in the TV report.
Since the video was uploaded to the TV station’s own Youtube channel on Wednesday, gay rights groups have fiercely condemned the TV station’s “blatant act of privacy and rights violation.” The video has since been removed by Youtube.
“Your news item has hunted down private profiles of individuals from a gay social networking website and then have aired not only their names and their pictures, it has also called them up in a clear attempt at entrapment and prodded them with leading questions about their private sexual lives, for the sole purpose of providing unnecessary titillation to your general viewers.” Aditya Bondyopadhyay, a lawyer and Director of LGBT rights group Adhikaar, wrote in a letter to TV9’s legal department highlighting the National Broadcasters Association Guidelines that they have breached.
Under Code 6 the guidelines, TV channels “must not intrude on private lives, or personal affairs of individuals, unless there is a clearly established larger and identifiable public interest for such a broadcast. The underlying principle that news channels abide by is that the intrusion of the private spaces, records, transcripts, telephone conversations and any other material will not be for salacious interest, but only when warranted in the public interest.”
Code 9 states: “As a guiding principle, sting and under cover operations should be a last resort of news channels in an attempt to give the viewer comprehensive coverage of any news story. News channels will not allow sex and sleaze as a means to carry out sting operations…”
Adhikaar further called for TV9 to be “held solely responsible for any harm or injury that is caused to any member of the LGBT community of Hyderabad or anywhere else in India where there is reception of your Telugu news channel, since your news item is clearly a case of incitement to targeted violence or discrimination against member of the LGBT community.”
To make amends for these violations, the letter demands that the TV 9 “airs an apology each, separately and specifically, to each and every individual who has been maliciously and unethically targeted” by the channel, as well as to publish a “news article apologising to the entire LGBT community of India whose security, constitutionally protected liberties and freedoms, and fundamental rights to a life of dignity, have been severely jeopardised by [the station’s] unscientific, prejudiced, unsubstantiated, malicious, and vicious content and comments.”
It also demands that TV9 “widely advertises its apologies in every news daily (newspaper) published in the city of Hyderabad in Telugu and English Language, on two separate days, so that the repairing of the damage that your news broadcast has caused to the safety and security of individuals and to an entire community is impactful and of a sustained nature.”
A peaceful protest has been planned for Friday, Feb 25 from 5.30pm at TV9 Maharashtra's office in Mumbai. For updates, visit “United against TV9” Facebook event page.