 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Mr. Paranjay Guha Takurtha to talk about the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting's latest order. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Vivan, for having me on this program. Paranjay, could you please tell us a bit about the contents of this order and what your perception is on its outcome? On the 4th of April, the new media cell of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued an order constituting a committee made almost entirely largely of civil servants and bureaucrats for framing regulations for online media and news portals and online content. Now what was the justification they used? And let me first elaborate on what this order is all about and then we can discuss why this order in my opinion is insidious and a way in which the government is trying to covertly control the working of online media. Now this order says that when you look at private satellite television channels and there are close to 900 of such channels who've got permission from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to uplink, downlink, their content which is transmitted or transmitted through cable television, they are regulated, the programming as well as the advertisement codes are regulated under a law called the Cable Television Networks Regulation Act of 1995 and they have earlier, the earlier year that is 1994, there was a Cable Television Network Rules. Now all these television channels are supposed to adhere to the rules and the provisions of the Act laid down. Similarly for the print medium, there is a quasi-judicial body called the Press Council of India. I used to be a member of the Press Council of India. Now this has a set of norms to regulate the print medium unlike the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting which is a licensing authority and therefore because it issues the license it can withdraw the license or suspend the license. The Press Council of India though it's a quasi-judicial body set up by an Act of Parliament it has no punitive powers. So to even describe it as a toothless tiger would be very charitable. So here is two bodies and they are supposed to put together norms with ostensibly aim at regulating both television and the print medium. Now what this government order says that there are no norms or guidelines to regulate online media websites, news portals and including including NewsClick which is like digital broadcasters which are not only putting out news but also entertainment program so-called infotainment programs and they're not just putting out news or content of their own they're also aggregating media from other sources. So the government decides to constitute a committee and I read here to frame and suggest a regulatory framework for online media stroke news portals including digital broadcasting and entertainment stroke infotainment sites and news stroke media aggregators. Now this committee and there are at least nine members the convener of this committee is the secretary of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The other members include the secretary of the MEITY earlier the DEITY which is the Department of Electronics and Information Technology. It was part of the Ministry of Communications and now it's a separate ministry. Interestingly it also includes the secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the secretary of the Department of Legal Affairs, the secretary of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. It also includes the Chief Executive Officer of the Government Portal which is my gov and then come some of the representatives who are not career bureaucrats who are the one representative of the Press Council of India, one representative of this private body of broadcasters, news broadcasters that's the NBA that's the News Broadcasters Association and another representative of the IBF that's Indian Broadcasters Federation or maybe it's the Indian Broadcasting Federation and the secretary INB Ministry can invite anybody else from any other organization to be a member of that committee. Now when you look at the terms of reference of this committee and here there are three terms. Let me just quickly read them out. One is to delineate the sphere of online information dissemination which needs to be brought under regulation on the lines for print and electronic media. Two, to recommend an appropriate policy formulation for online media, stroke, news, portals and online content platforms etc etc keeping in mind the extent that the existing FDI norms that the foreign direct investment norms and the program and advertising code for television channels, the norms circulated by the Press Council of India, the Code of Ethics, framed by the News Broadcasters Association etc etc etc and then three, it is also supposed to analyze the international scenario on such existing regulatory mechanisms with a view to incorporate the best practices. Signed Amit Katoch, director, new media cell ministry of information and broadcasting. Now why do I say that at face value it appears very innocuous but I think this could be one of the ways the government wants to control what people hear, what people read, what people listen to online. I think it's a not so subtle a covert means of perhaps even controlling online media especially those websites which are particularly critical of the government. I mean that maybe is my interpretation of the government's intentions. I'm sure the government will probably deny ever having such intentions but that's the way I interpret it. But of course on one hand you have private news channels or private news or I mean online news portals who create content or aggregate content but then you also have a whole generation of content aggregators or content generators on social media, YouTube, there are plenty of YouTubers who air their own views and upload their videos. So in your opinion would this also probably end up coming under these? You know it's difficult to predict what would happen but we already have in place certain acts and certain rules. We have the Information Technology Act and under that we have the rules, the Information Technology Rules. A few years ago the Supreme Court actually struck down as being against the Constitution, against the Article 191A of the Constitution of India which is about freedom of expression, Article 192 which lays down what are called reasonable restrictions on the right to free expression. Now that was 66A. Now the Supreme Court said this is not constitutional and repealed this particular provision of the law but what is happening is that what you see is that there are other laws as well and there are other regulatory bodies as well, including the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the DEI-TY. Now they can block the URLs, the universal resource locators of any website. That way they have the power and then they in fact have invoked that power on occasions. Now that is also a controlling body and you have within that department CERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team which is typically headed by the national information, the person who oversees issues relating to information technology and security. Now what I'm saying is you already have laws in place. That's not all. You have a technical and a commercial regulator and that is the TRAI, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Now these two bodies exist and why is the TRAI important? Because in today's day and age, in this day and age of the internet, the difference between what we earlier said telecommunication, what we call telecommunications and what we call broadcasting doesn't exist anymore. It's completely disappeared. I mean in the palm of your hand you have everything. So what was earlier telecommunications and what was earlier broadcasting, there's no difference. So you already have these two organizations. The question is why do you need another policy? Are these policies inadequate? What needs to be done? You know I think there are a lot of issues on online content, notably fake news and I think internationally too it's become a huge issue particularly because Facebook has been found to have given out personal data to Cambridge Analytica, which data which was supposed to be personal but which clearly has been misused for all kinds of reasons including political purposes to wield an influence on the politics of individual countries. So this is happening at a time when there's been a lot of turmoil, turbulence, about the manner in which bodies like Facebook or organizations like Facebook operate. Well going a little bit on the fake news side of this. I mean this response of the information and broadcasting ministry has come soon after the news of postcard news founders arrest and prior to that they had also issued an order. Actually it was a statement which was withdrawn. You know the issue of fake news is a very important issue no doubt. Today Facebook the number of users of Facebook is more than the population of the People's Republic of China. The day is not far when if you combine the population of India and China the number of Facebooks might increase but might be higher than that you know which is I mean India and China have about 40 percent of the world's population. So we can't ignore Facebook. When you look at say the over-the-top service like WhatsApp at any given 24-hour cycle about a billion and a half messages, messages with photographs, with videos are being exchanged on WhatsApp. So again you can't ignore WhatsApp and a lot of fake information is being disseminated on these social media. And let me be very clear fake news is not necessarily misinformation. You know you can be misinformed I can be misinformed about something. This is what we call disinformation or propaganda. Information that you know is untrue which is false but nevertheless being distributed and disseminated very widely and why. Okay there could be commercial reasons but more importantly and this is the worrying part of it. It could create social tension and it has. We've seen in India's videos that were recorded and some other time in some other part of the world which have been circulated and that's created tension between two communities. We've seen recently cases of little clips being taken from fiction films and being distributed on WhatsApp and people think that's a real thing that's happening. The infamous Draupadi's Vastraharanthi and you know Draupadi being disrobed and people think it's something real that's happened and there's a lot of fake information that's put out. So the problem with fake news is real and present and surely if a district magistrate has a right to block the internet because the particular person fears that there could be social unrest, public order would be disrupted then the question would be how can do we control it. Now this has happened in different parts of India in Jammu and Kashmir and in other parts of the country. It's happened very recently in areas where there's been tension between two communities. The question is how do you then handle it. I don't think what the information and broadcasting minister Mrs. Smriti Zubin Irani had in mind was really the way forward. As has been commented by many people you're suggesting a cure that was worse than the disease. Thank you for enjoying. Thank you everyone for speaking with me. And thank you for watching NewsClick. That's all for today.