A rare piece of good news has come the way of India’s beleaguered digital media which has now, most would agree, assumed the role of chief guardian of the country’s media freedoms: the striking down of the Union government’s FCU or Fact Check Unit.
The Bombay High Court on September 20 declared it illegal and violative of several constitutional provisions including of course Article 19 1(a), or freedom of speech and expression.
We need to take a moment here to salute a wide range of actors, including those like satirist Kunal Kamra who filed petitions; lawyers whose virtuosity was acknowledged even by the court that heard them; conscientious judges who weighed in on the matter after careful consideration of all the material evidence before them; and media rights activists and bodies who have systematically and indefatigably followed the case through its many peregrinations.
It is their combined brilliance that has seen this malevolent instrument, which would have given the Government of India overweening powers of censorship, being placed on ice.
The very fact that the FCU almost came to fruition testifies to the government’s anxiety to quell any whiff of dissent, any smithereen of criticism, any breath of defiance, any flash of independence from the digital media. In order to understand the full extent of this anxiety we need to map the sequence of developments which has more twists and turns than a spy thriller.
It began in 2018 with then minister of Information and Broadcasting, Smriti Irani, issuing a directive seeking to deny accreditation to media organisations putting out “fake news”. That directive was withdrawn following a national outcry, but in the period when the country was wrestling with the pandemic, Irani and her BJP colleagues got busy drawing up blueprints on how to actualise this intent.
In February 2021, in sailed what could be called the mother ship, christened The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, an ostensibly innocuous set of guidelines under the Information Technology Act, 2000, birthed by the ministries of Electronics & Information Technology and Information & Broadcasting. Its stated intention was to protect citizens from media harms.
The Rules also came with elaborate mechanisms for redressal of public complaints, models for self-regulation, as well as penalties and covered the entire digital media world, including online intermediaries, online gaming intermediaries, publishers of online curated content and, most important for our purposes here, publishers of news and current affairs.
Not persuaded by the seeming innocence of the Rules and convinced that they were only a thinly veiled attempt at censorship, several media entities filed petitions against them in various courts. Some of these have been partially heard, but earlier this year the Supreme Court, clubbed and transferred them to the Delhi High Court for an analogous hearing at some future date.
Meanwhile the Government of India (GOI) got busy incrementally tightening its digital information control regime by regularly tweaking the IT Rules. In 2023 came an amendment to Rule 3(1)(b)(v) of these Rules allowing the instituting of an FCU to look into digital coverage of matters involving the GOI. It was to be administered by the government’s publicity wing, the Press Information Bureau (PIB), which had been dabbling in “fact-checking” since 2019.
In other words, through an amazingly flat-footed power grab, the central government delegated to itself the legal authority to decide what constitutes “false”, “fake” or “misleading” information in matters deemed as its “business”. What exactly is meant by terms like “fake” or indeed “government business” was kept open-ended – the amendment took care not to define them.
The PIB enthusiastically embraced its now legally bestowed responsibility. Its PIB-FCU page on X, to take an example, makes a boast, cowboy style: “We bust news and misinformation related to the Government of India”.
The page follows 33 people, including the PM, the Home Minister and DD News. Among its 317,000 followers are those with names like swastik_wala, the_resistance7_, jyooti, 11wolverine9, ruskinbond757,hanumadbhaktahpunitah_. If they sound remarkably like a troll army of the Sangh, suppress the thought, because this is serious stuff.
For all you know, swastika_wala is an important source for the PIB-FCU’s fact-checking interventions. A good deal of the material the PIB-FCU has marked ‘FAKE’/’FARZI’ has to do with the prime minister, or projects close to his heart like the Ganga Vilas Cruise.
Also it is quick to expose any claim made by the Opposition that it can possibly mark as dodgy. On July 27, it labeled as ‘Misleading’ the claim made by @MamataOfficial that her microphone was switched off doing the 9th Governing Council Meeting of NITI Aayog.
If you imagine that all this makes the PIB-FCU appear like an extension of the BJP’s political machinery rather than a bonafide, bias-free fact-checking instrument, you are not wrong. As a Newslaundry article by Ayush Tiwari observed on PIB’s early fact-checking endeavours: “The PIB sells denials as fact checks. It does not understand the difference between ‘refutation’ and ‘repudiation’.”
Anyone can refute anything, but repudiation needs a rational argument. Unfortunately, the PIB never grew out of its denial mode of fact-checking, even after it was given the onerous legal responsibility of fact-checking digital media content under the IT Rules.
The GOI’s FCU has been struck down for the moment. The question of course is for how long will this happy circumstance prevail? Going by its arguments in court, the GOI seems to be in no mood to let the matter rest. It has argued in court “the right to have correct and filtered information was an integral part of the fundamental right guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.”
But can anyone guarantee that the information the GOI puts out is “correct and filtered information”? As Justice A.S. Chandurkar of the Bombay High Court gently pointed out in his recent verdict, “under the right to freedom of speech and expression, there is no further ‘right to the truth’ nor is it the responsibility of the State to ensure that the citizens are entitled only to ‘information’ that was not fake or false or misleading as identified by the FCU.”
Certainly putting the GOI’s FCU under the scanner through a judicial process has yielded a valuable relearning of basic constitutional principles. It has also sharpened the resolve of both citizens and media actors to defend their precious freedoms.
Hundred years of Hindustan Times
It is hard to imagine in these days of self-censorship and blatant control of legacy media and the public narrative that there was a time when an Indian newspaper carried banner headlines about ‘Trampled Rights and Liberties’, or decried censorship and arbitrary brutality on its front pages.
Some of the pages from its history that Hindustan Times (HT) recently shared with its readers to mark its 100th anniversary provided a glimpse into an era when newspapers reflected a serious attempt to constitute themselves as the nation speaking to itself. These pages also came as a forceful reminder of the tragic shrinkage of independence of thought and analyses that have come to mark more recent times.
Initially the HT front page carried the defining line, ‘The only Nationalist Paper in North India’. One page in particular that caught my eye was that of April 7, 1930. Its banner headline cocked a snook at the country’s colonial masters. It read: ‘Historic March Ends’. The reference was to the Dandi march. A large photograph of the intrepid marchers with Gandhi (at the centre) along with his saathis, all of them wearing determined expressions and white khadi caps, is a valuable document of those times of resistance.
The determination of the newspaper to take on the British Raj is evident in a startling cartoon done in 1936 by the young K. Shankar Pillai, who would later be better known as just Shankar. He was one of the central pillars of the country’s legacy of political satire through cartoons as manifested in the famed Shankar’s Weekly which he published between 1948 and 1975. It took the Indira Gandhi emergency to shut it down.
The cartoon shows a journalist sitting on a table under which a stove burns. Overhead, various bayonets target him representing the repressive regime under which he functioned. Each bayonet is neatly labeled as Censorship, Section 124 A (sedition), Criminal Law Amendment Act, Official Black List, Security Proceedings, Section 500 IPC. The catch line goes: “Is the Journalist’s life a happy one? (Apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan)”.
That the newspapers of the day had to struggle to sustain themselves was indisputable. Today when blatantly corporate considerations have come to decide editorial policy in fat cat establishments, it may be worth taking note of a front page plea made by HT on October 23, 1924, shortly after it was set up.
It informed its readers that its circulation has “gone up to an unexpected extent”, and went on to add that it was “First with news and fearless in views” and affords advertisers “an unequalled opportunity for expanding their business”. The point to note here is that its fearlessness and courage were seen as valuable attributes that should rightly attract advertisers.
Inconceivable to imagine a similar appeal being made in these times by any newspaper, including by the venerable Hindustan Times!
Readers Write In…
Go Telegraphic
Received this mail from Prasanth Kumar of Cuttack, addressed to the Wire Team: “I am a regular reader of The Wire and greatly appreciate the in-depth coverage and insightful reporting it offers. I believe that introducing a Telegram channel for your news updates would significantly enhance accessibility and allow readers to stay better informed with ease. With Telegram’s growing popularity and its features allowing seamless sharing and notifications, a dedicated channel would be a valuable addition for your audience. Thank you for considering this suggestion. I look forward to your continued excellence in journalism.”
Not enough on the R.G.Kar hospital brutality?
There was also this angry missive (or should we call it a missile?) from someone using the pseudonym ‘spiritofcricket’: “You have utterly failed. You’re not investigative journalists but propaganda mouthpieces. While a massive cover-up unfolds in Bengal, your so-called ‘independent journalism’ ignores Mamata completely. Yet, you somehow have the time and resources to focus on trivialities like how a flag was made. Shut down this propaganda machine. You’re a disgrace and deserve nothing less than the harshest fate. You are the reason this nation is in such a dire state. By covering up Mamata’s crimes, you are complicit in her wrongdoings, including being rape sympathisers by association. You will be held accountable for this.”
My response: “Apologies for this delayed response to the letter as I happened to be travelling from mid-July to late September. Since coming back, I have revisited the pieces on Bengal and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee put out by the The Wire during this period and I must say I didn’t see the point being raised by ‘spiritofcricket’. I am assuming, therefore, that the assessment is an early and therefore premature one. The Wire carried over 10 pieces on the subject.
Although there could always be more reportage and sharper commentary, taken as a whole The Wire did a fair job in keeping up with the news cycle on the case. Certainly, the accusation that this news portal was soft on Mamata seems to be overblown, considering that there were at least three pieces very critical of her, including one published a week after the horrendous rape-murder of a postgraduate trainee doctor at the R.G. Kar Hospital.
Sexual predator, apathetic university
And while on the subject of endemic gender violence, we received an anguished letter from a student of Pondicherry University, accusing a male classmate of repeated acts of sexual harassment with the university authorities choosing to remain apathetic. This is the situation in so many of our institutions of education and we are therefore publishing it while anonymising the name of the sender.
“I am a student at the Pondicherry University…Along with my classmates, I have been subjected to repeated sexual harassment by a male classmate – both inside and outside the classroom. But the real nightmare is how the university has failed us at every step.
“For the past year, we have faced inappropriate touching, groping, and verbal intimidation. When we finally reported this to our professors, we were met with cold indifference and victim-blaming. One professor even suggested we avoid such ‘situations’ by retreating to our hostels, ignoring that the harassment occurred in our own classrooms. Instead of helping us, they made us feel that we were the problem. We’ve been told: ‘Why bring this up now? It’s in the past.’ ‘Raising your voice will only isolate you.’ ‘You’re ruining the department’s reputation.’
“Imagine being forced to sit in the same classroom as your harasser every day, while the people who are supposed to protect you turn a blind eye. That’s our reality. We turned to the Sexual Harassment Prevention Committee (SHPC), thinking it would offer us justice, but even there, we found nothing but excuses. Their response was so disconnected from the reality of the situation that it seemed almost surreal. When we peacefully protested, they finally recreated an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC), but the process has been painfully slow and remains in the hands of those who originally ignored our cries for help.
“And now, we’re getting unofficial calls from unknown numbers—people trying to intimidate us into silence. We are still sitting next to our harasser every day. The department cancelled our study tour, claiming it was for our ‘safety’, but they’ve taken no real action to protect us.
“This is why I’m reaching out to you. We’ve exhausted every avenue within the university, and we’ve been abandoned by the very system that is supposed to keep us safe. We need your support to use your platform to reveal the truth of the situation. Please help us bring this issue to the forefront. Your voice could be the one that finally makes them listen.”
Tail piece
The recent experience of Vidya Subramaniam, well-known columnist and former associate editor at the Hindu, would indicate that anybody can fall victim to the diabolic antics of the ubiquitous fake news factory. An open letter supposedly written by her to Rahul Gandhi, under her misspelt name and complete with the exhortation, “Read till end and forward it”, carried gems like:
“Does Democracy to you mean only for interest of your Party and Family? Please do not insult the verdict of the people of India. The country has voted for Modiji and he has been chosen as the Leader by the NDA and thus took oath of office as full-fledged PM.”
“Did you assume LOP to be the ‘Leader of Protest’? It was deplorable to see your leadership was nothing more than that of a mob leader who has neither authority nor responsibility.”
“You yourself have always tried to humiliate the Armed Forces by questioning their death-defying acts of valour and loyalty. Will the Armed Forces ever salute you with respect and pride, even if you ever become the PM?”
What was even more disturbing was that this piece of drivel appeared along with Vidya’s photograph purloined from one of her online pieces.
Deeply incensed and disturbed over this blatant identity theft, Vidya posted a rejoinder on Facebook: “One of the whatsapp groups I’m on alerted me to a fake open letter to RG allegedly written by me. It has my photo and a text that’s plain rubbish. My name is incorrectly spelt in the alleged open letter and I was never in the army as claimed by whoever wrote it. The letter is an outright fake. Those who know me will surely know where I stand ideologically and with respect to Narendra Modi.”
Write to ombudsperson@thewire.in
