Parmanand Pandey, Advocate, Supreme Court (Secretary General IPC)
There is no doubt that social media has now become the most powerful form of media. Audio-visual electronic media is nowhere near the reach of social media. Print media is not even the patch of it. Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter have completely changed the form and the content of the news and views.
However, social media’s reliability is at the lowest ebb. It has become the platform of fake news, malicious propaganda and easy mode of information, disinformation and misinformation. Earlier it was considered that the news must satisfy the five components of Ws (what, when, where, why, and who) and one H i.e., how. If the information does not qualify on the anvil of aforesaid information, it is not considered to be news, but such rigours are a far cry for social media.
These days a controversy is raging over the commentating tags attached by Twitter on some tweets of some persons. The question is that if the platform is merely an intermediary between the content creators and its intended audiance and to purvey the views and comments of one and all how can it be selective in attaching the tags like ‘manipulative media’? By attaching such tags, the Twitter administration becomes a party, jury and judge at the same time. It has no powers and functions to investigate any tweet and declaring as ‘manipulative’.
The ideal position is that it must have a policy of uniform application of some mechanism to filter and weed out any objectively decided any and all ‘objectionable’ or ‘offensive’ news or comments of any user. But when it lacks such wherewithal it cannot subjectively attach such tags capriously at its whims and fancy under its sweet judgment. The owners of these social media are doing so for long in India, and particularly in recent months. Recently it has happened in the case of the BJP spokesperson and some of its leaders whose tweets were unilaterally declared to be manipulative.
Twitter is an American company owned by one young man Jack Dorsey and Facebook and WhatsApp are owned by another young American Mark Zuckerberg. These companies have global reach cutting beyond the geographical and linguistic barriers of any country, but they cannot violate the laws of the country, where they operate. These companies cannot refuse to cooperate with the local police and investigating agencies in finding the truth. If they do so, they can be rightly prohibited and prevented from carrying out their operations in the country. It is not a hidden fact that these American gentlemen have their own personal opinions having political overtones about things happening in India. In other words they have an agenda and they are trying to advance that agenda in India under an innocuously looking lable of doing ‘business of providing service flatform’. This cannot be and should not be allowed by the Indian government. This is precisely for this reason that China does not allow Twitter to operate there and has provided Weibo as an alternative to Twitter for its people.
Unfortunately, in India, there is no institutionalised mechanism to regulate social media. There is no gatekeeper to check the contents appearing on these platforms as anybody can post or tweet anything of his or her own volition. This is a highly dangerous practice, which is being allowed in the name of freedom of speech and expression. As a result of it, almost every day the mountains of fake and trash materials including obscene ones are purveyed through social media. An overwhelming number of persons using these platforms do not have even an inkling of the ‘reasonable restrictions’ imposed by the constitutions of some countries. Judging by this behaviour, the step of China banning the operation of foreign media cannot be said to be an unreasonable one. God forbid, if the limit is crossed, India may be compelled to follow in the Chinese footsteps.
Till then India will do well to enact a media council consisting of eminent persons from the law, journalism, and social background with impeccable integrity to look into the complaints against or by the media to regulate it properly. Its decisions should be quick and impartial. Those found to be guilty of violating must be adequately punished so as to deter others from committing improprieties. It should not be like the useless present press Council. Earlier the Press Council of India is disbanded to be replaced with the Media Council and better for the robust freedom of speech and expression.