Govt should give up bid to police media

For whatever reason, what may be called the infamous Fake News Circular, issued by the information and broadcasting ministry late on Monday, and energetically propagated through Twitter past midnight that day by I&B minister Smriti Irani, who has earned the unenviable reputation of making a mess of portfolios she handles, was hastily withdrawn on Tuesday, under instructions from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it was given out.

This is a positive development, although speculation may persist that the PM stepped in when Ms Irani’s move had drawn immediate and widespread condemnation. Arguably, at a time when the government is buffeted with scandals and leaks — look at the PNB and ICICI Bank scams and the CBSE leak — and attacks on dalits, it was time for the government to engage with the media, not to brandish a stick. The I&B minister seems not to have understood her remit. But will she quit, or be asked to go? Either seems quite unlikely.

Now journalists won’t have their accreditation suspended or revoked, as threatened by Ms Irani, even if they write critical — which is a world apart from fake news — stuff or occasionally commit reporting errors, that are corrected by proper journalists, who are a world apart from social media warriors or disseminators of news without basis, namely fake news.

This government is so concentrated in a single hand that many believe — including in BJP circles — that not a bird stirs in the bush without the PMO knowing. So was Ms Irani going solo and was the PMO clueless? That would be a surprise considering that only recently Ms Irani had spelt out her intentions in a television interview to regulate — or go after — journalists and social media trolls if she thought their work unsatisfactory, and her views were criticised in the media. It’s hard to squelch the thinking that what Ms Irani was made to do was float a trial balloon. As it got shot down, the higher-ups went into correction mode.

Fake news is actually no news at all. It basically refers to a recent phenomenon worldwide, specially in the United States, to concoct and disseminate stuff against political opponents, or stuff to make right-wing forces gain electoral advantage — as in Donald Trump’s case — by trying to exploit the credulousness of ordinary folk. Worldwide, it is practically a right-wing monopoly. At least 13 Union ministers recently endorsed a fake news site called The True Picture, which appears to have links with those who recently helped publish PM Narendra Modi’s book Exam Warriors. This can only boost the impression that Ms Irani wasn’t acting entirely independently and her thoughts arose from groupthink.

The government has no business policing the media. There are defamation and libel laws against those who may be tempted to wilfully distort news.