Govt has given itself absolute power to determine what’s fake or not: Editors Guild on new IT Amendment Rules

Under the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2023, any news that has been deemed “fake” by the Press Information Bureau’s (PIB) fact-checking unit will have to be taken down by all platforms, including social media platforms.

“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 notice read. “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 Shreya 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.”

The guild stated that the new amendments were akin to censorship. It wrote in its notice that the Ministry notified the amendment, without “any meaningful consultation that it had promised after it withdrew the earlier draft amendments it had put out in January 2023.”

The guild has previously raised concerns about the fact checking unit, stating that the “determination of fake news cannot be in the sole hands of the government”. In a statement released on January 18 and signed by president Seema Mustafa, general secretary Anant Nath and treasurer Shriram Pawar, the guild said that “it is deeply concerned by the draft amendment made to the Information Technology Rules, 2021, by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MEITY) that gives authority to PIB to determine the veracity of news reports, and anything termed ‘fake’ will have to be taken down by online intermediaries, including social media platforms”.

“The determination of fake news cannot be in the sole hands of the government and will result in the censorship of the press,” the older statement read.