In a meeting held here on Friday, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) unanimously decided to impose a fine of Rs 1 million on each private national TV channel and Rs 500,000 on each private regional TV channel which aired unverified news of a bomb blast in Gulberg, Lahore.
The authority also directed the management of all 29 TV channels to air apologies on March 6 at 6 pm in along with tickers from 6-7 pm. PEMRA has even supplied the text of the apology that it wants aired. The text of the apology is also given to these TV channels for compliance.
The national channels fined by the regulatory body were Samaa TV, Dawn News, Channel-5, 7 News, Din News, Capital TV, BOL News, News One, Abb Takk, Roze TV, K-21, Jaag TV, Waqt TV, Channel-92, Express News, Sach TV, Channel-24, Lahore News, Metro One, Geo News, Duniya TV, ARY News, NEO TV, and Koh-e-Noor. The regional channels fined by PEMRA were KTN News, Sindh TV News, Khyber News, Awaz TV, and Mehran TV.
PEMRA has also asked the ministry of information and broadcasting to look into complaints against PTV for airing the same news.
Earlier, the authority had issued show cause notices to these TV channels to give them an opportunity to explain why they had aired the unverified news causing a panic among people. During the hearing, the majority of the representatives from the channels admitted that they had simply picked the story from other channels.
