At Gaysi we are deeply disappointed by TV9’s homophobic story “Gay Culture Rampant in Hyd”. For cheap sensationalism, TV9, a Telugu channel carried out a slanderous and malicious story outing young gay men from Hyderabad, without their consent. Extremely personal information of these men, including physical statistics, sexual preferences and positions were revealed, blatantly violating their privacy and dignity. In an unconfirmed news, one of the men attempted suicide.
We demand TV9
* To take down the video from TV9’s Youtube channel immediately
* Release a statement promising better understanding and sensitivity to LGBT issues, in the future
You can read the text of the story in English here : Gay Culture Rampant in Hyd
Update :
Feb 23, 2010 : Thanks to all your efforts, the video has been taken down from Youtube.
Feb 25, 2010 : Join us at the protests against TV9 in Mumbai. For details click here.
Feb 26, 2010 : Hyderabad Protest outside TV9 at 4 pm, Saturday Feb 26, 2011. Address: TV9 Office, # 97, Road# 3, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad. Please spread the word.
Feb 28, 2010 : Delhi protest outside TV9 at 5 PM, Monday Feb 28, 2011. For details click here. Please spread the word.
Protest reports:
Read Mumbai protest report here.
Below is an open letter highlighting TV9’s homophobic story. Please send your polite yet firm response to Ms.A.Padmavathi, who handles the Grievance redressal cell of TV9. You can reach her via email, phone or regular mail. Please share this page with your friends and ask them to voice their opposition to TV9’s blatant act of privacy and rights violation.
Ms. A. Padmavathi,
Legal Co-ordinator
Associated Broadcasting Company
Pvt. Ltd. Plot No.97, Road No.3, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad –… 500 034.
Tel.: 040-23352900 Fax: 040-66660335
Email: padmavathi.appala@tv9.net
Dear Ms. Padmavati,
I have been a big fan of your channel for the past several months and enjoyed your fun filled youtube videos. However I am deeply disappointed to say that I was quite appalled by the youtube segment “Gay Culture Rampant in Hyd”. I was of the impression that your channel has a quite diverse team who would have sensitivity towards marginalized groups be due to caste (quoting your networks original cause to end casteism in India), gender or sexual orientation (GLBT: gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) discrimination.
The United Nations World Health Organization in 1980 declared that being straight or gay or lesbian or bisexual is innately part of the human sexuality after decades of research and scientific data. The American Psychiatric Organization, Psychological association declared the same in 1970’s. Britain which left us with the colonial laws criminalizing gays, changed their laws in 1968. Not to be left out, our own Delhi High Court declared in a monumental case (Naz Foundation vs. NCT) that discrimination based on sexual orientation is anathema to our constitutional morality.
In addition to this, your own NewBroadcasters Association Code of Ethics and Broadcasting Standards clearly prohibits superstition (Section 2 Article 8 ) to be passed of, as a fact. The video on yotube just did that by accusing those young adults of ‘deviant’ behavior as a fact. This so called ‘fact’ in the video has been thoroughly debunked by decades of actual scientific research and that being gay is not deviant just as there are people who are innately left handed. And add to this our Indian constitution construing sexual orientation rights part of Article 15 and 21 (right to life including dignity and privacy)
With such illustrious acceptance and celebration of the natural vagaries of human sexuality, your youtube comes across as very insensitive to the privacy of the ‘outed’ youths clearly violating dignity and privacy guaranteed by your own Code of Ethics, let alone our Indian Constitution, I am sure you can imagine the social untouchability these young kids would have to face now that you have outed them without their permission.
I pray and hope this was unintended by your channel. If so please refer to the following website which details how the press can handle this issue delicately with sensitivity and care: http://www.glaad.org/reference
I appreciate your patience and any action you could do to correct this wrong.
Please let me know if I can be of any help to assist your organization to obtain more GLBT sensitivity materials. I look forward to patronize your channel that is sensitive to the vulnerable in the society, particularly the minorities (namely gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders).
Best regards,
Velu
Executive team, Orinam.net
orinamwebber@gmail.com
Our thanks to :
Queer Coolie, Gaysi
Velu, Movenpick(MP)/Orinam.net
Press, Movenpick (MP)
Ram Abhireddy, Bangalore (English translation)
Aniruddhan Vasudevan, Shakti Center
Dear Ms. Padmavati,
I am quite not sure, why the prestige news channel had to take such actions on sensitive issues? Be the person be Gay or Lesbian or any other caste and creed, no news agency has right to intervene into the social network site and publicly disobey or disrespect human values. By this you proved your inefficiency and lack of motivating the human values.
Legally, first you have no right to publicly get the community without the consent of the website. By this telecast you have disrespected and violated the media conduct policy. Website can even sue you or your company for such misconduct. We shall also be writing the same to the website as this has created unnecessary havoc in the society.
Secondly, in your telecast you have featured boys / men of various age groups. Some you have tagged as white collared professionals, while some you have commented as students. If that’s the case, my question to you is, have they done anything wrong being gay? Is that their crime? Have they misled anyone or anything? Answer this; in case you cannot answer the above questions, Being Gay is Crime? I believe even Delhi court has legalized and uplifted the ban on article 377, and then who are you to challenge the court verdict without any consent? We shall even go court for this behavior.
We would request you to ask your apology in the same news channel with the new telecast and all those who were involved in this mel-drama, be sacked or terminated immediately. Would suggest the editor who approved such a nastiest telecast.
Request to consider this as our polite warning. Will wait for your comment / actions.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150417744115384&id=560141120
Aditya’s legal letter to them 🙂
The Youtube video is unavailable now 🙂
We’re a good team!
My Email to Tv9
From: truth unveils
To: info@tv9.net; response@tv9.net
Subject: News and journalism is all about sense and facts .. Not being bitchy fishy always
Date: Tue, Feb 22, 2011 11:33 pm
You walk into your house and see all your bedroom is inspected by all your friends ? Will you accept it ?? to some extent YES .. what if strangers get to open your wardrobe and check your things ?How will you react? Want you feel Ewww ??
Why do you think you have privacy settings in Facebook ? I am sure you will have a profile on facebook . What if we sneak your pic and publish it for no good reason ? “EVEN FOR NO GOOD REASON you will not approve it.
All I can say is Please grow up … News and journalism is all about sense and facts .. Not being bitchy fishy always… RIP@ TV9 ..
You fools – from business perspective you have clearly shown that there are 6000 subscribers of Planetromeo website. I am sure these 6000 people will never watch this channel. I am sure they will ensure that there family members also will not stay tuned to your channel. Look @ 360 degree perspective of Business.
I am putting all my good luck .. Face the reality .. i am sure u would have got memo’s from the broadcasting body for screwing up privacy. Shame on you guys …!!!! (IMMATURE JOURNALIST GROUP)
Regards,
Planet Romeo User
Please do something constructive and don’t be news hungry. It was sad to see videos on you tube and TV9 has no right to decide what is good and what not good they are not moral police! please leave this to us we shall decide what lifestyle we want.
I suggest please do a sting operations on corrupt politicians and govt officials and not on Gays they haven’t done anything wrong…
I HATE TV9!
Can we have the contents of the file
http://gaysifamily.com/2011/02/23/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/TV9_GayCulture_hydbd_english.pdf
uploaded please? The file is unavailable.
Also, if someone could add Aditya B.’s legal letter to the .pdf file and upload that as well. Some of us don’t have FaceBook profiles 🙂
Deep – The PDF has link been fixed. Thanks
They finally took down the video but the question still remains… Will they apologise in public and if they don’t then will a serious legal course be taken to serve as an example for consequence of such insensitive reporting?
Another website which has the video
http://www.gulte.com/index.php?andhra-political-news=gay-culture-in-hyderabad&page=news_updates&link=8103
Absolutely such evasive building should be out thrown immediately. educative people should uderstand how to build the conducive environment, at least when broadcasting to others.
Such media should be taught a lesson. My letter to TV9 stated very clear, in case there is no public apology and the termination of the broadcaster including the editor, then there would surely be the case filing from two aspects, one from the planetromeo website, which though being legal was misused by TV9 channel. And secondly TV9 going against the verdict of the Delhi High Court.
TV9 do not have any moral right to publish nonsense news just to gain some few coverage. There should be serious actions, so that others could learn a lesson from this.
People, supporters, Gays, Lesbian, Other communities (even religious bodies) should stand together at this time, as for no reason TV9 channel broad casted few profiles and pictures, even voice recordings.
I don’t understand why the Government of India still own a deaf ears?
Stand up and revolt for the right that got dignified.
Can we all please report this link and have this video taken out as well. What a shame for the news channel everyone should boycott TV9 until a public apology is sorted.
Website : Dailymotion.com
Title : Gulte.com -Gay Culture in Hyderabad
Can someone please sue them monetarily? For atleast $25 Million? So that no broadcaster in India dares to intrude private space?
The money can be used to educate the general public on homosexuals and generate a class action in India!
To use the real names of people without their permission was most unethical and outrageous. Would such a channel dare do a sting on straight men who frequent brothels or dance bars? Imagine if all the guys who went to a disco hoping to find a date with the opposite sex were treated like this?
Such behaviour has to be roundly condemned so that it never happens again.
But there is an important lesson for the entire gay community. We must organize and act in ways so that our lives our accepted and respected in broad daylight. Whether we seek partners for sex or for love, we need to be treated with dignity and equality.
That means that we still have a huge task ahead of us in educating the Indian public so that people can learn to accept us without being judgemental or unkind.
It is really a very saddest day of gays n bi’s of city. this bloody channel have nothing to telecast n they dont hv ethics of broad casting also. If at all they want to telecast they can telecast their own staff’s private life on tv.
Request to please take down this as well
Dear AJ,
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We have made repeated requests to the owner of this video (hydhotstud or something) to take it down. He doesn’t seem to care, which makes us wonder if he posted this on purpose.
We have also flagged it as inappropriate, hopefully Youtube will take it down. At this point, the only way to minimize the damage is not to spread the link around, hence I took the liberty of removing the link from your comment.
Thanks again for alerting us.
Regards,
Shri
It is all indicate about our unity to fight against them.
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Dear all,
I only recently came to know about this incident. We all know about the incredibility, senselessness and hunger for money and TRP of most of the indian channels. However, this mindless act is totally a violation of individual liberty and freedom, which are the underlying values of the Indian Constitution. Hence this homophobic channel should not be spared so easily.
Not only they have make an apology and but also strict action should be taken on the involved media persons. If they do not, you have right to complain about it not only in the court, but also News Broadcasters association, so if they haven’t yet, please register your complaint on the following site :
http://www.nbanewdelhi.com/How-to-Make-a-Complaint.asp
Regards
Tv9 is a shame to journalism
Guys new news is that TV9 is plotting again to broadcast their shit again and this time targeting Bangalore!…
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