 "New broadcasting bill could label you as digital news reporter: Here's how")
The new draft of the broadcasting bill 2024 could label individual content creators, who upload multimedia content related to current affairs on various social media platforms, as digital news broadcasters.
This is the second draft of the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2024, shared with stakeholders, which aims to address the ambiguities identified in the initial draft presented for public consultation in November 2023, Livemint reported on Friday.
Definition of news broadcasters under new bill
The new draft defines ‘professional’ as a person engaged in an occupation or vocation — and ‘systematic activity’ as “any structured or organised activity that involves an element of planning, method, continuity or persistence”.
According to the new draft, “news and current affairs programmes” would include ‘texts’ apart from the existing “audio, visual or audio-visual content, sign, signals, writing, images” which are “transmitted directly or using a broadcasting network”.
Who may be impacted by the new broadcasting bill?
The Hindu Business Line, in a report earlier this month, had said that the proposed threshold to regulate various platforms and content creators under the new bill could be one million, which the stakeholders believe is not a high benchmark.
Besides user generated content, the Centre also aims to regulate over-the-top (OTT) platforms under this new bill. However, the revised draft no longer mentions the streaming platforms as a part of the definition of ‘internet broadcasting services’.
The OTT platforms are now referred to as a ‘publisher of online curated content’ to bring them in line with IT Rules 2021. The content broadcast on these platforms is defined as the curations that exclude news and current affairs programs.
With the new bill, the Centre is pushing for a consolidated legal framework to organise the broadcasting sector, replacing all the existing policies.
The bill will replace one of the earlier key regulations for cable television, governed by the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act of 1995.