India’s fake-news reversal welcome

Mercifully, some bad ideas are put to rest quickly. The Indian government’s decision to shelve plans to restrain journalists deemed to be peddling falsehoods was one. Less than 24 hours after prompting an outcry from the media, Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered his information and broadcasting ministry to retreat. Hopefully, that is the end of it.

Malaysian journalists are not so lucky. Last week, the government in Kuala Lumpur began pushing through a law that will make the dissemination of “fake news” punishable by up to six years in prison. The offence includes anyone sharing news on social media that the authorities decide is false. It also carries heavy fines.

In India, the government had envisaged the lesser sanction of removing or suspending the accreditation of offending journalists. Understandably, human rights activists and members of the media saw this is as the thin end of the censor’s wedge — a tool Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party could use to control the narrative in the run-up to elections.

No doubt, the ease with which malevolent propaganda spreads and sticks can be alarming. Mark Twain, the US author, put it powerfully when he said “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”. That was more than a century before the internet and social media enabled disinformation to travel freely across borders at speeds unimaginable when Huckleberry Finn was floating along the Mississippi.

The problem is who gets to decide what is or is not a lie. Governments cannot be trusted to become the ultimate arbiter of what journalists should or should not write. Even in countries with a strong tradition of a free press, mainstream media organisations are already tightly restricted in what they can publish by libel and other laws.

India’s journalists were right in pointing out the danger that tackling “fake news” has become a smokescreen for muzzling the press. London, April 9