Editors Guild of India: Four Media Laws Threaten Press Freedom in India

Newsreel Asia Insight #288
July 21, 2024

The Editors Guild of India (EGI) has written to Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, urging him to raise the issue of press freedom and right to information in the Parliament. In a letter, the EGI expressed deep concerns over several recent legislative measures which threaten the fundamental freedoms that underpin journalistic practice in the country.

Specifically, the guild criticised the passage of laws without necessary stakeholder consultation or adequate parliamentary scrutiny. “They carry provisions that are vague and overboard, which could be misused to restrict legitimate journalistic activities,” the EGI stated in the letter shared on the social media platform X.

The editors noted that the letter had been sent to leaders of various opposition parties to call for a renewed debate and consultations on the legislative measures that aim to control media across print, broadcast and digital platforms.

The concerns raised by the EGI specifically mention the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (2023), the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill (2023), the Press and Registration of Periodicals Act (2023) and the IT Rules 2021, with its subsequent amendments in 2023. Each of these legislations includes provisions that potentially infringe upon press freedom and could undermine the efficacy of journalistic work, the editors said.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, they said, presents several challenges for journalistic activities due to its lack of specific exemptions for processing personal data for journalistic purposes, a departure from previous versions and international standards. This absence severely hinders essential journalistic functions such as research, investigation and publication. The Act imposes mandatory consent requirements for data processing, which can obstruct journalistic inquiries since obtaining consent is often impractical, especially in investigative journalism. Further, the Act includes burdensome provisions like purpose specification, consent withdrawal and data erasure, which are impractical for journalistic work.

Furthermore, the Act endows the government with extensive powers to exempt its agencies from these provisions and to demand information from data fiduciaries, which could jeopardise the confidentiality of journalistic sources, the EGI said. It also potentially weakens the Right to Information Act by broadening the criteria for rejecting RTI applications. The Act fails to introduce necessary reforms to surveillance practices, thereby enabling a framework that supports the surveillance of citizens, including journalists. Lastly, it grants the government the ability to censor content under the broad and ambiguous justification of protecting the “interest of the general public.”

About the expanded regulatory powers granted by the Press and Registration of Periodicals Act, the guild said it allows for significant governmental control over the press, including the power to deny or cancel registrations on dubious grounds, which could be weaponised against critics of the state.

Under the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill, the creation of content evaluation committees and a Broadcast Advisory Council headed by a bureaucrat could lead to overt government censorship, the guild said, noting the vague grounds on which content can be regulated or prohibited.

The guild further said the amendments to the IT Rules give the government sweeping authority to determine the veracity of information regarding its operations and to direct intermediaries not to host content deemed fake, false, or misleading. The guild argued that this absolute power lacks any mechanism for oversight, judicial review, or compliance with Supreme Court guidelines on content blocking, which effectively leads to censorship. They highlighted the significant issue of non-adherence to these Supreme Court guidelines.

The EGI has taken legal action against some of these amendments, notably challenging the “fact-checking unit” in the Bombay High Court, a move that was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court with a stay on the implementation of the unit.