NEW DELHI: In India’s highly cluttered private satellite television news market, the Prasar Bharati chief executive officer BS Lalli has a message: maintain sobriety instead of presenting news in a sensational manner.

While applauding the move by the TV news industry to self-regulate in a purposeful fashion, Lalli stressed on the need to maintain the sensibilities of the people in a widely pluralistic country.

“I am happy to note that news channels have been fairly responsible in their coverage and have been indulging in self-regulation of content. Sobriety rather than sensationalism should be the requirement of the hour," Lalli said here today, while inaugurating the third Indian News Television (NT) Summit.

He said DD News, which airs 16 hours of live news daily, continued to remain the only bilingual news channel telecasting in Hindi and English, apart from bulletins in Urdu and Sanskrit.

The primary aim of the government and the public broadcaster was to reach those large areas still uncovered by television so that citizens could be “empowered with objective facts and dispassionate analysis” since this was the “heart and hallmark of a democracy”.

Lalli said TV had seen phenomenal growth in the country and from just Doordarshan in the early nineties, the country now had over 500 channels being downlinked to Indian viewers, opening up the skies to rapid expansion.

All India Radio had added around 122 news bulletins over the past few years in different languages, he added.