Editors Guild red flags data protection law’s curtailment of press freedom
The apex body of journalists has in its submission raised some serious concerns about the law and sought exemption from its provisions
The Editors Guild of India (EGI) on Friday (February 16, 2024) submitted to the Centre a representation on the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA), 2023, seeking exemption for journalists from certain provisions of the law.
In its seven-page submission to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), the EGI has flagged some concerns over the curtailment of the freedom of the press the law entails.
The DPDPA regulates the processing – collection, use and storage – of personal data that journalists inevitably use while plying their trade.
“The DPDPA, while a laudable initiative towards protecting the personal data of individuals, if applied indiscriminately to the processing of personal data in a journalistic context, will bring journalism in the country to a standstill. This will have a long-standing impact on the freedom of the press, and the dissemination of information not just in reporting in print, TV, and the internet, but also the mere issuance of press releases by all parties including political parties,” the EGI said in its submission.
The DPDPA requires individuals or entities that determine the purpose and means of processing such personal data outside a personal or domestic context, called data fiduciaries – read journalists and media organizations – to meet various requirements such as the provision of notice and obtaining consent and erasure, among others. “These requirements are undeniably onerous in the context of processing for journalistic purposes,” the EGI added.
By implication, journalists will invariably have to rely upon consent to process any personal data in the course of their journalistic pursuits, thus making it impossible for them to function.
Section 7 of the DPDPA requires all processing of personal data to proceed on the basis of either consent or certain legitimate uses, such as for employment purposes or in the case of a medical emergency, which the EGI has termed “narrow buckets” as data processing for journalistic activities falls outside their purview.
Apart from making it mandatory to seek consent for data processing, the law requires the information to be processed for specific purposes which according to the EGI should not apply to journalists. The DPDPA also mandates the deletion of personal data where a data principal withdraws consent unless the retention is necessary for compliance with any other law, which would have wide-reaching implications for journalists, requiring them even to delete notes containing personal data.
Under Section 36 of the DPDPA, the Centre can seek any information from the data fiduciary thus violating the confidentiality of sources. According to the EGI, such provisions are violative of constitutional provisions like Article 19(1).
In order to buttress its case for exemption, the EGI has referred to a report of the Srikrishna Committee and the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018 – prepared by the Srikrishna Committee – the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, and the Data Protection Bill, 2021, which exempted processing for journalistic purposes from such provisions.