The Tamil Nadu government has passed an order to set up a fact-check unit to counter communal misinformation, disinformation and hate speech against it, the Hindustan Times reported on Thursday.
The 80-member unit will fact-check news content related to the state government across all media platforms, according to the newspaper.
The unit can take suo motu cognisance of any content related to the state government for fact-checking or act on complaints from “various sources”, The Hindu reported, citing a government order issued in October.
Iyan Karthikeyan, who ran a YouTube fact-check channel named YouTurn, has been appointed as the mission director. He will report to the department of special program implementation led by state minister Udhayanidhi Stalin, the Hindustan Times reported.
In August, the Congress government in Karnataka had announced it was setting up a fact-checking unit to crack down on misinformation and disinformation on social media, phishing emails and cybercrime in the state.
In April, the Union government also promulgated the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2023, that amended the Information Technology Rules, 2021. This permitted the creation of a fact-checking unit at the Central government’s level.
The Rules allow the Centre’s fact-check unit to flag what it considers “fake or false or misleading” online content “related to the business of the Central government” and demand its removal. Social media intermediaries have to censor or modify content flagged by the unit.
Centre’s move was challenged in the Bombay High Court. In September, the court observed that the amendment gives “unfettered power” to the Union government in the absence of guidelines or guardrails.
The Editors Guild of India in April raised concerns about the fact-check units that the Centre and the Karnataka government had planned.
The Guild said it is “deeply disturbed” by the amendments and urged the Union information technology ministry to withdraw the notification. “In effect, the government has given itself absolute power to determine what is fake or not, in respect of its own work, and order takedown,” the association said in a statement.
It said the amendments will have “deeply adverse implications” for press freedom in the country.
In August, the association asked the Karnataka government to define the scope and powers of its proposed fact-check unit saying that it should be independent of executive control to ensure that it does not become a tool “to clamp down on voices of dissent”.
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