New Delhi: It has been decided to hand over the responsibility of ascertaining the truth of the news published on social media about the central government to PIP, a press information agency operating under the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. For this, the Indian Newspaper Association, known as INS, has condemned the central government’s plan to amend the Information Technology Act.
The Central Government provides information on the policies, programmes, projects, achievements and reports of the Central Government through PIP, through print, visual and ‘digital’ media.
complaint
This company is functioning under the control of the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. All the media are publishing the news that it officially provides.
In this case, a lot of false news is being published on social media about the central government.
No clear procedure is followed to ascertain its genuineness. Therefore, it has been complained for many years that false information is spreading rapidly among people.
To put an end to this issue of fake news, the central government was considering various procedures. Accordingly, the central government has decided to amend the IT rules. According to this amendment, it has been decided to give the responsibility of verifying the veracity of the news published on social media about the central government to BIP.
severely affected
The Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has released a draft proposal for this. The Newspaper Association of India has condemned it. In this regard, the association issued a statement:
It would not be proper to assign the responsibility of ascertaining the truthfulness of news related to the Central Government and controlling it to an organization under the control of the Central Government. This decision will seriously affect the functioning of the Indian media.
This will create a possibility of blacking out honest criticisms written about the policies and activities of the central government. So the central government should abandon this decision.
Decision to discuss
The central government should adopt different procedures to ascertain the authenticity of news published on social media. In this regard, a decision should be reached in consultation with the media concerned. It says so.
In this regard, Union Minister of State for Information Technology Rajiv Chandrasekhar told reporters yesterday that the consultation regarding the Personal Data Protection Act has been completed and is under consideration by the Central Government.
Notification regarding this will be released soon. The notification regarding the regulation of ‘online’ games is expected to be released on 31st of this month.
We have decided to hold a separate discussion with the stakeholders early next month regarding amending the law to give the PIP the responsibility of fact-finding regarding social media news. This is what he said.
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