Federal Minister of Information & Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry on Wednesday made an announcement that after reviewing the role of Press Council of Pakistan (PCP) and Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), it has been decided that all the regulatory authorities will be combined into a single body – Pakistan Media Regulatory Authority.
While talking to media, Fawad Chaudhry said with the coordination of our media friends we have come to a decision that we will merge PEMRA and PCP to make a new body “which will not only look after electronic media but also print and cyber media (social media)”.
He also said that “There should be one regulatory authority to look at all mediums, and the same laws and censors should apply across the board”.
According to Fawad Chaudhry, this plan of constituting a new body by combining PCP and PEMRA will result in saving the resources of government. After this he referred to the remarks which were passed by Supreme Court during a case of related to media having its own code of ethics, he said that this would also be taken into consideration.
In the last week, Fawad Chaudhry announced that the government of PTI had lifted political censorship on state-run news organizations.
We have decided to launch two new channels of PTV,a dedicated Sports Channel to cover all sports except Cricket and present PTV Sports shall be rebranded as PTV Cricket. A dedicated Channel for Children under sixteen…. All suggestions welcome
— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) August 25, 2018
In a tweet, Information Minister said that the two huge media channels PTV and Pakistan Radio would now be able to enjoy editorial independence over the content which they make. Moreover, he said that these changes would be visible in a few months.