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The Press Council of India has been established with the objects of the preserving the freedom of the Press and of maintaining improving the standards of newspapers and news agencies in the country. It is to further these objects, that the Council is required among other things, to help newspapers and news agencies to maintain independence, to build up a code of conduct for newspapers agencies and journalists in accordance with high professional stands to ensure on their parts the maintenance of high standards of public taste and to foster a due sense of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and to foster the growth of a sense of responsibility and public service among all those engaged in the profession of journalism.
One law that concerns not only the journalist, editor, newspaper establishment or the Press in general but also outsiders who have a grievance with the Press, is the Press Council of India Act passed nearly a quarter century ago to redress complaints, both of the citizen aggrieved with the Press or a journalist as well as the journalist, editor or newspaper against the administration.
The Act established a Press Council for the purpose of preserving the freedom of the Press and of maintaining and improving the standard of newspapers and news agencies in the country as a statutory body as against the non-statutory Press Council in England. The PCI was first established in 1965 on the recommendation of the first Press Council in 1954, but was abolished in 1976 by the Indira Gandhi's government through an Ordinance, which later became the Press council (Repeal) Act, 1976. The reason given for the abolition was that the council has failed to set and had dealt with only complaints of minor nature, thus failing to become a respectable body of case law. The Janata Party government that come to power after lifting of Emergency by Mrs. Gandhi, enacted the Press Council of India Act, 1978. The Press Council's new 'Norms of Journalistic Conduct' was framed in August 1996 under an activist chairman, Justice P.B. Sawant.
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