Why is Govt standing as mute witness, treating it as trivial matter: Bench of Justices Joseph & Roy. Expressing its anguish and displeasure over hate speeches via debates on TV channels, the Supreme Court Wednesday called the “visual media” the “chief medium of hate speech” and questioned the government why it is “standing by as a mute witness when all this is happening” and treating it as “a trivial matter”. Pointing out that “hate speech can be in different forms… sort of ridicule a community” and its spread through the visual media can have a “devastating effect”, the bench of Justices K M Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy, inclined to regulate such debates, asked the Centre to state whether it proposed to come up with any law on the subject. The bench underlined that “hate drives TRPs, drives profit” and said it will consider laying down some guidelines which will hold the field until the legislature comes up with a law on the matter. “What… we have in mind, for example, when you conduct an interview, what is important is laying down the methodology. Now the methodology would be: What is the role of the anchor? If the anchor is going to take the lion’s share of the time of the debate, if the question of the anchor is so long, finally the time which is given to the person who is giving the answer is so short. And even in that short period, he is actually run down, he is made into some kind of a rogue,” Justice Joseph said. “You have to be fair to everyone. So that is what we are interested in saying, apart from the contours of hate speech till it is defined appropriately by the competent legislature,” he said. The bench was hearing a clutch of petitions on alleged hate speech via some TV shows. The petitioners have sought directions from the court to the Centre to take steps to curb incidents of such speech. Justice Joseph said the problem will go on “unless there is an institutional mechanism to deal with it”, and “what can be done till the government acts is” to “possibly consider” acting on the lines of the Vishaka case where the top court laid down guidelines to deal with sexual harassment at workplace.