The Information & Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry has approached the Directorate of Information and Public Relations (DIPR) of all the State and Union Territory governments to initiate an awareness drive for sensitising their officials to the code of ethics and procedure, and safeguards in relation to the digital media.
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Part-III of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which was notified by the Central government on February 25, 2021, relates to the digital news publishers, including websites, portals and YouTube news channels, and Over The Top (OTT) platforms, which stream online curated contents such as web series and films. It is administered by the Ministry.
Grievance redress mechanism
The Rules provide for a code of ethics to be followed by digital news publishers and OTT platforms; a three-tier grievance redress mechanism, which includes self-regulation by publishers at the first level, self-regulation by self-regulating bodies of the publishers and an oversight mechanism by the Central government; and procedures for them to furnish the required information.
In this regard, the Ministry has written to the DIPRs and also shared hard/soft copies of the resource material on the Rules, Information booklets on FAQs, and awareness initiatives/webinars conducted by the Ministry, to be shared with the officials in the State and Union Territory governments, besides the district level authorities.
The FAQs have also been translated into multiple regional languages and made available along with all the other relevant details on the Rules at the digital media division of the Ministry.