The Centre’s move allowing the government to fact-check news organizations and social media platforms has been met with some reservations. BOOM spoke to Editors and media executives who said that newsrooms run by journalists are best placed to fact-check the government and not the other way around.
Ritu Kapur of TheQuint said it is important to understand how the fact-checking unit will be constituted, the credentials of its members and how neutral it will be in its fact-checking.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on April 6 notified amendments to the Information Technology (IT) Rules, 2021 which mandated the media and social media platforms to take down government-related content that has been fact-checked as false, fake or misleading by the Centre.
If they fail to take down content, intermediaries and social media platforms stand to lose their safe harbour protection guaranteed by section 79 of the Information and Technology (IT) Act, 2000.
As of now, the Public Information Bureau’s (PIB) fact-checking unit is doing the job, but Minister of State (Electronics and Technology) Rajeev Chandrashekhar announced the government’s intent to notify a separate organisation that will be a fact checker of content related to the government for all intermediaries.
However, speaking to the media, Chandrashekhar clarified, “[government’s] Fact checking unit does not take down valuable content unless it is fake.”
Absurd for government to fact-check news, fact-checkers
Senior reporters believe that the role of news organisations is to fact-check the government. It is absurd to rely on the government for facts,” Prabir Purkayastha told BOOM. Purkayashta, Editor-in-Chief of news portal NewsClick said facts are not subject to interpretation. “Fact-checking should be left to news organisations and fact-checkers who do this [job], he added.
The government does not have the ability to undertake this exercise, Purkayastha added.
The Editor’s Guild of India on April 6 issued a statement saying it was “disturbed” by the government’s move.
The guild said the new IT Rules will have “deeply adverse implications for press freedom in the country”. The guild added that the Centre has “in effect given itself the “absolute power to determine what is fake or not, in respect of its own work”.
On opposing views to a fact-check, who is right and who is wrong?
Prateek Waghre, Policy Director at Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) said the government’s move to become the ultimate authority on the veracity of news is concerning. “The PIB Fact Check unit has got it wrong on earlier occasions. So, in essence, does the new amendment mean that the government is the judge, jury and executioner?” Waghre said.
“What happens when one questions government policies? Every opinion, news story could potentially be labelled as fake, false or misleading if it questions the effectiveness of the government policies,” he added.
Elaborating on the government’s move, Chandrashekhar had said, “Intermediaries who choose to keep that content will have to deal with the person who is aggrieved in a court of law.”
“It is not mandatory that one has to take down what the notified organisation says, but then you have to deal with it in a court of law,” the minister told the media on Thursday.
But, what is the redressal system?
Kapur, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Quint Digital Media Limited, said there is no clarity on how the government will constitute this fact-checking unit. Sameer, a media professional* (name changed because he did not wish to be identified) said as of now the misinformation has not been defined and it is open to misinterpretation. “There is also no methodology or process laid out for fact-checking and debunking of the purported misinformation,” Sameer added.
Sameer wondered if the new rule will uphold the scrutiny of the law. So how can anything be taken at face value? Sameer said.
Kapur said clarity was not only needed on how the fact-checking unit will be notified but who goes to which court in cases of dispute. Who is the aggrieved party here? The government, an individual, the publisher of news that has been deemed fake or the social media platform which does not want to take down the news item.
Kapur also questioned the government’s decision to limit the scope to Centre-related news. “At a time when misinformation is an epidemic, don’t know why the government is looking to combat misinformation which is related to it only,” she added.
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Amendment on fact-checking a last-minute addition?
The new IT Rules largely focus on the online gaming industry, so the inclusion of an amendment on fact-checking is inconsistent and not in good faith” Prateek Waghre said. “Even the consultation around this amendment was suspect, as it was introduced on the deadline for public comments on unrelated amendments for online gaming intermediaries,” he added.
This meant that many kinds of services/businesses that operate on the internet were now impacted and unlikely to have been tracking it closely since the existing consultation was, more or less, limited to the online gaming industry. In addition, the effective consultation period was very short, and not in keeping with the contentious nature of the amendment that adversely affects public discourse and all intermediaries.” Waghre added.
The IT Rules have been problematic from the start. In 2021, several media organisations, including WhatsApp, challenged the IT Rules, 2020 before the Delhi High Court and other high courts across the country.
Purkayastha said the April 6 amendment should not be looked at in isolation. "You have to see the rule in its totality. It is many things in the offing. This is just a small part of it," he added.
However, advocate Kaushik Moitra, Partner - Bharucha & Partners, does not feel regulation necessarily means censorship. But Moitra cautioned that it runs the risk of misuse in case the stakeholders do not work in tandem.