Draft bill sparks fear of micro-managing content across platforms

Ever since the draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2023, was made public by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) seeking comments, many of its provisions have been red-flagged by media industry and legal experts. The bill will replace the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, which regulates the broadcasting sector.

Most people argue the bill will curb the creative freedom of OTT (over-the-top) video platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+Hotstar, but the truth is it will end up micro-managing content across media platforms. Even digital news platforms of independent journalists will be impacted as all news and current affairs broadcast through “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”.