India TV Editor-in-chief Rajat Sharma was re-elected as President of the News Broadcasters & Digital Association (NBDA) today, Exchange4Media reported. According to India TV, this is the fifth time Sharma has been elected as president of the body.

Avinash Pandey, CEO of ABP Network was elected as Vice President while M.K Anand, Managing Director & CEO of Times Network, Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd, was elected as Honorary treasurer on the NBDA Board for 2021-2022.

The appointments took place during NBDA’s board meeting held today, where the 14th Annual Report of NBDA was presented.

Other members of the NDBA are Rahul Joshi, Managing Director of TV18, I. Venkat, Director of Eenadu Television, Kalli Purie Bhandal, Vice-Chairperson & Managing Director TV Today Network, Sonia Singh, Editorial Director, NDTV, and Sudhir Chaudhary, CEO of Cluster 1, Zee Media.

In August, the body of news organizers changed its name from News Broadcasters Association to News Broadcasters and Digital Associations in order to reflect the addition of digital news media broadcasters as its members.

In a statement issued by Sharma today, he said that while television was still the ‘dominant medium,’ digital was the ‘future,’ and the Board had decided to bring digital media news broadcasters within the membership of the NBDA to embrace this changing landscape.

The name of the self-regulatory body News Broadcasting Standard Authority has also been changed to News Broadcasting & Digital Standards Authority and it will look into complaints of broadcasters as well as digital news media.

Sharma spoke about NBDA challenging the constitutionality of the new IT Rules and Cable Amendment Rules on various grounds, including the grounds that “the Rules give the Government Authorities excessive powers to unreasonably and impermissibly restrict the freedom of speech and expression of the media under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.”

Sharma mentioned how the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) ratings had not been restored yet. “The NBDA Board and BARC have had several rounds of discussions to ensure that reliable, credible, tamper free data is made available to the news broadcasters. NBDA has stated that the corrupt, compromised, irrationally fluctuating data will not be acceptable as the false narrative puts pressure to take editorial calls that run counter to the principles and ethics of journalism.”