What is the Govt’s Fact Check Unit, the notification of which the Supreme Court has now stayed?

The 2023 amendment introduced a legal mechanism for the government to fact-check online content pertaining to “any business of the Central Government”. However, the FCU itself was notified only on Wednesday (March 20).

Since the FCU was stayed by the Supreme Court the day after it was notified, is there no fact-check unit in the PIB now?

There is. In fact, an official fact-checking unit has been in existence in the PIB for more than four years. The PIB, which functions under the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, is the media and publicity arm of the Government of India.

What the March 20 notification issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology did was to give the FCU legal status and teeth, and to impose a legal obligation on online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to take down any content that the FCU branded as “fake”.

A failure to comply would lead the online intermediaries to lose their “safe harbour,” which is the legal immunity they enjoy against third-party content.

The March 20 notification — which has now been stayed by the SC — was issued a day before the Supreme Court was to hear an appeal against the rejection by the Bombay High Court of a plea for an interim stay on the amended Rules.

So what has the Ministry of I&B’s fact-checking unit been doing until now?

Since being set up in November 2019, the said unit has “fact-checked” thousands of WhatsApp forwards, YouTube videos, and newspaper and digital media articles. I&B Minister Anurag Thakur told Rajya Sabha in July 2023 that the FCU took action in 28,380 instances involving “fake news” on digital platforms between November 2020 and June 2023.

Content that the FCU finds is “fake” or “misleading” is prominently stamped as such, and the decision is publicised through the unit’s social media handles — @PIBFactCheck on Twitter (X) and Koo, /PIBFactCheck on Instagram and Facebook, etc.

Thus, on March 13, after a purported notification on the appointment of Election Commissioners was shared on social media, the FCU stamped it as “fake” on its handles.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&gt;<p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>A notification regarding the appointment of two Election Commissioners to the Election Commission of India is circulating on social media <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/PIBFactCheck?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#PIBFactCheck</a><br><br>✔️This notification is <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/fake?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#fake</a><br><br>✔️No such Gazette notification has been issued. <a href=”https://t.co/VUCgl4l8wS”>pic.twitter.com/VUCgl4l8wS</a></p>&mdash; PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) <a href=”https://twitter.com/PIBFactCheck/status/1767848390660903381?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>March 13, 2024</a></blockquote>

On March 11, the unit flagged as “fake” WhatsApp forwards “claiming that PM Narendra Modi is giving 3 Months free recharge to all Indian users”.

Did you also receive a #WhatsApp forward claiming that PM Narendra Modi is giving 𝟑 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐡𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞 to all Indian users ⁉️#PIBFactCheck

❌Beware! This claim is 𝐟𝐚𝐤𝐞

✔️Government of India is running 𝐧𝐨 such scheme

✔️This is an attempt to defraud pic.twitter.com/NtlnAUWZwI

— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) March 11, 2024

The factchecking unit has also branded news reports by established media organisations as “misleading” and “misinformation”. On March 12, it posted on its X handle: “Misinformation is being spread by @AJEnglish regarding the Citizenship Amendment Act, calling the act ‘anti-Muslim’.” The reference was to a news report on Al Jazeera headlined, “India implements ‘anti-Muslim’ 2019 citizenship law weeks before election”.

Misinformation is being spread by @AJEnglish regarding the Citizenship Amendment Act, calling the act ‘anti-Muslim’#PIBFactCheck

▶️This claim is misleading!

1/2 pic.twitter.com/EkaV2sEr5X

— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) March 12, 2024

PIB said that “CAA will not take away citizenship of any Indian citizen irrespective of religion. It’s not against any single religion/ community”, and “It’s an enabling law only to provide citizenship to persecuted minorities from neighboring countries — Afghanistan, Pakistan & Bangladesh”.

Last year, according to a statement by the government, the FCU had called out nine YouTube channels — ‘Bharat Ekta News’, ‘Bajrang Education’, ‘Bj News’, ‘Sansani Live TV’, ‘GVT News’, ‘Daily Study’, ‘Ab Bolega Bharat’, ‘Sarkari Yojana Official’, and ‘Aapke Guruji’ — for circulating fake news and misinformation, including misattributing derogatory statements to constitutional figures such as the Chief Justice of India and the Prime Minister.

However, beyond such branding, the PIB’s fact-checking unit did not do much.

This will change if and when the SC vacates the stay on the March 20 notification — it will then be incumbent upon Internet platforms to remove the identified content from their accounts, or face legal proceedings arising out of their inaction.

With less than a month to go for Lok Sabha elections, these sweeping powers to take down content that the government deems to be fake or misleading, can have far-reaching impacts.

How does the fact-checking unit function currently?

The unit is based in the National Media Centre on New Delhi’s Raisina Road, and is headed by the PIB’s Additional Director General, Alok Mishra. Two joint directors and an assistant director are also assigned to the FCU.

The FCU is mandated to counter misinformation on government policies, initiatives, and schemes either suo motu or under a reference via complaints. Citizens can reach out to the PIB’s FCU in various ways, including by WhatsApp, email, an X post, and through the PIB’s website. An automated response is sent to the complainant by WhatsApp or email following the submission of the complaint.

Officials said that the FCU only takes up complaints related to the Government of India, its Ministries, Departments, Public Sector entities etc. Any matter that does not pertain to the Union Government is not taken up for evaluation or fact-checking by the PIB unit.

According to officials, the evaluation is done by a two-step process. First, the received complaints are researched against authoritative government sources such as websites, press releases, and government social media accounts. The unit then checks complaints with the concerned Ministry, and creates content for social media.

Officials said the fact-checking process is based on the “FACT model” — Find, Assess, Create, and Target. In its FAQ section, the FCU says: “News reports and other information published by private organizations are not used in the process of verification/ evaluation of the veracity of a piece of information related to the business of the Government of India.”

Various technological tools such as reverse image search, video analysis, etc. to identify if a viral image or video is re-circulated on social media in a different context with the intention of misleading the audience about the functioning of the government, are also deployed, officials said.