B.B. C. Defends Indian Series

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32385, 26 August 1970, Page 13

B.B. C. Defends Indian Series

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, Aug. 25. The 8.8. C. is planning to continue its controversial television series on India in spite of reported Indian Government threats to expel a 8.8. C. correspondent in New Delhi. The series is being directed by the French film direc-

tor, Louis Malle, and has already been attacked by the Indian Government for apparently stressing the seamier side of Indian life. A 8.8. C. spokesman said yesterday that the corporation had received no official word of the expulsion threat, and still intended to show the next film tonight This is an episode in which girls of an Indian tribe are sexually initiated at the age of 13 and encouraged in promiscuity thereafter.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Association of South Asia said yesterday that it would consider it a wholly undesirable precedent if Mr Ronald Robson, the New Delhi 8.8. C. correspondent, were asked to leave India. The president, Mr John Slee, said in a letter to the Indian Government that the association “would deplore any action against an individual correspondent by the Government of India for a complaint it might have against the correspondent’s employer.” Mr Slee said that, on the Government’s own admission, Mr Robson’s reporting of India had been fair and accurate and within the best traditions of responsible journalism. ,