Editors Guild Opposes MEITY’s Notification Which Gives Sole Right to Government to Determine Fake News.
(Judicial Quest News Network)
New Delhi 7, April, 2023: The Editors Guild of India on Friday Urged that determination of the fake news cannot be in the sole hands of the government and will result in the censorship of the press, The Guild said in a press release issued by it.
“The Editors Guild of India is deeply disturbed by the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2023 (IT Amendment Rules, 2023), which have been notified by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on April 6, 2023”
It is further said anything declared fake by the PIB will have to be taken by online intermediaries including social media platforms. MeitY has introduced amendments to the IT Rules that will have deeply adverse implications for press freedom in the country. As per the rules that have been notified, the Ministry has given itself the power to constitute a “fact checking unit”, which will have sweeping powers to determine what is “fake or false or misleading”, with respect to “any business of the Central Government”, and with instructions to ‘intermediaries’ (including social media intermediaries, Internet Service Providers, and other service providers), to not host such content. In effect, the government has given itself absolute power to determine what is fake or not, in respect of its own work, and order take down. The so called ‘fact checking unit’ can be constituted by the Ministry, by a simple “notification published in the Official Gazette”.
The Guild also said in the press release that there is no mention of what will be the governing mechanism for such a fact checking unit, the judicial oversight, the right to appeal, or adherence to the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court of India in Sheriya Singhal v Union of India case, with respect to take down of content or blocking of social media handles. All this is against principles of natural justice, and akin to censorship.
What is further surprising is that the Ministry has notified this amendment, without any meaningful consultation that it had promised after it withdrew the earlier draft amendments it had put out in January 2023. These had given sweeping powers to the Press Information Bureau (PIB), which was universally criticized by media organisations across the country, including the Guild. The Ministry’s notification of such draconian rules is therefore regrettable. The Guild again urges the Ministry to
Withdraw this notification and conduct consultations with media organizations and press bodies.
