Union Government Working On Bill To Regulate Digital Media

In a move that could ruffle some feathers, Union Minister Anurag Thakur has said that the union government is working on a Bill to regulate digital media in the country. 

“Digital media presents opportunities as well as challenges… I would say that changes have to be brought in law, we will bring that to make your work simple and easy. We are working to introduce a bill,” the Minister was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

Addressing an event organised by Hindi news daily Mahanagar Times, Thakur also said that the centre was also planning to bring a new law to replace the 1867 Press and Registration of Books Act.

This, he said, would simplify the process of registration of newspapers and slash the time period for registration from current four months to a week via online mode. 

Calling on the media to do its work ‘responsibly’, the Minister also added that the news platforms should avoid creating an atmosphere of ‘fear and confusion.’ The Union Minister also noted that the onus lay on newspapers to bring the ‘right news’ before the general public at the ‘right time.’

Thakur also pointed out that news had evolved from one-way communication earlier to a multidimensional format with the development of electronic and digital media. He further added that news from the smallest villages was being disseminated nationally through digital media. 

Govt Vs Digital Media

This comes months after it was widely reported that the centre was in the process of tabling a Bill (purportedly called the Registration of Press and Periodicals Bill) before the Cabinet to enforce a new registration regime for digital news portals. 

Interestingly, this is not the first time that the authorities have sought to bring digital news platforms under the ambit of law. In 2017, the centre had formulated a rough draft of the  ‘Registration of Newspapers and Publications Bill, 2017’ which was later put on backburner by the authorities. 

The Bill was later repackaged and republished two years later as the ‘Registration of Press and Periodicals Bill, 2019’ with certain changes. 

The 2019 version of the Bill was widely panned by critics, terming the move an attempt to ‘control’ digital news media. It was later put into cold storage amid protests and has been reviewed now, around three years later.

Currently, the digital media sphere is largely self-regulated, albeit under the purview of the new IT Rules, 2021. However, many have pointed out that the regulation suffers from a plethora of issues such as vague definition of ‘publisher of news and current affairs content’ and potential censorship concerns.

Another issue facing the industry appears to be big tech eating into the margins of online news publishers. Earlier on November 24, it was reported that industry body Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) would host a dialogue between key digital media players to discuss the antitrust practices of tech giants. The organisation has also mounted a legal challenge against Google over alleged abuse of dominance in the news aggregator space. 

The move to regulate online media platforms comes at a time when the general populace continues to see a higher degree of adoption of online media platforms. 

A study conducted by Oxford University along with Reuters found that nearly 73% of respondents in India accessed news via smartphones. Additionally, nearly 53% of the participants used social media platforms such as WhatsApp and YouTube for news.

Overall, the Indian digital media market was pegged at INR 30,000 Cr in 2021, which is expected to surge to INR 53,700 Cr by 2024.