Individuals posting news content online may come under ambit of new broadcast bill

The draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2023, floated by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting earlier this month, is aimed at regulating streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+Hotstar, but even individuals posting news and current affairs online may come under its ambit.

According to a Hindustan Times report, anyone posting content on news and current affairs on platforms like YouTube or WhatsApp and Telegram may be covered under this new Bill.

In simpler terms, certain social media accounts may fall come the same rules and obligations that regular OTT platforms would have to follow.

The report quoting Gowree Gokhale, partner at Nishith Desai Associates, and Nikhil Narendran, partner at Trilegal, said that the Bill would categorise streaming platforms and online news organisations as broadcasters instead of publishers.

Clause 20 of the Bill says “any person who broadcasts news and current affairs programs through an online paper, news portal, website, social media intermediary, or other similar medium but excluding publishers of newspapers and replica e-papers of such newspapers, as part of a systematic business, professional, or commercial activity shall adhere to the Programme Code and Advertisement code referred to in Section 19”.

Individuals and citizen journalists posting news content on YouTube channels and Instagram accounts as a professional activity would attract the same obligations as the OTT platforms, the report said. However, this rule would not apply to someone who posts news content only occasionally.

Would that mean a journalist putting out tweets on X would also come under this new law? “You could get included but that will be determined by how they notify the threshold for OTT platforms and if they will have a lower one for journalists,” Gokhale added.

“They may do something completely different for journalists as well. They ultimately want to control the virality of content. If there is a random individual posting things and earning money through it but has very few followers, the government may not want to go after such de minimus activity,” the publication quoted Gokhale as saying. “But in my mind, the threshold for this will remain very high. Regular people should not be affected,” Gokhale added.