DPDP Act could silence the press, major news publishers warn Supreme Court

• Supreme Court to hear on 17 November petition by 21 news publishers challenging DPDP Act’s impact on journalistic freedom and source confidentiality

• Petitioners argue the Act’s consent rules and lack of exemptions threaten investigative journalism and enable government overreach

• Independent journalists and freelancers face compliance challenges under the Act, risking self-censorship and reduced news coverage

• Amendments to RTI under DPDP Act may restrict access to critical public information, undermining transparency and press rights

On Tuesday, 27 October, the Supreme Court issued a notice to the Centre on a petition from 21 news publishers, including companies owned by Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani. The petitioners apprehend, and argued, that the Digital Personal Data Protection Act and its rules will “maim journalism”.

Senior advocate Madhavi Divan, appearing for the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), put the problem plainly: “If I am left to the mercy of the data principal as to whether he or she will give consent, how will news be reported?”

It is unusual to see India’s largest media houses, rarely natural allies for the cause of press-freedom, go to court together. That they have done so should tell us how serious the problem is.

Let us start with the design. The Act asks anyone who processes personal data to obtain consent. Journalism, however, is a trade built on information that someone would rather keep hidden. No minister has ever consented to a story about his undeclared assets. No contractor has signed a form approving a report on a rigged tender.

Unlike the European Union’s GDPR, which carves out space for journalistic work, the Indian law offers no such exemption. A reporter who gathers and publishes information about a person risks being treated as a “data fiduciary,” answerable to a Data Protection Board that is not independent of the government, with penalties of up to ₹250 crore.

Lawyer and activist Prashant Bhushan makes a fair point: while the law may not have been explicitly designed to target journalists, its broad and ambiguous language makes it a potential tool for doing so, if the need arises.

Laws are not judged by the intentions of their authors. They are judged by what they allow their enforcers to do. A statute that is vague enough to catch everyone gives the state the power to choose whom to catch. Selective enforcement rarely needs a ban on reporting. A notice, a compliance demand or the threat of a fine is enough to make an editor think twice about a story.

Anyone who has worked in a newsroom knows that the story most likely to die is not the one that is banned but the one the lawyers advise against.

The newsroom is not the only place where this will hurt. Investigative journalism often depends on documents obtained under the Right to Information Act, and the DPDP regime also amends Section 8(1)(j) of that Act, which handles personal information.

Details once open to scrutiny, such as the educational qualifications of an official or the particulars of a public contract, can now be refused in the name of privacy. As social activist Aruna Roy puts it, this is a lateral attack, and lateral attacks are often more dangerous than direct ones. Two rights that should reinforce each other have been set against each other.

The petition raises another worry: the Centre’s power to requisition information. If the state can demand “any information” from data holders, without telling the people affected, then the confidentiality of a journalist’s sources is only as strong as the government’s restraint.

A source speaks to a reporter because he trusts that no one else will find out. Once that trust goes, the whistleblower goes silent, and the story is never written. Press freedom does not usually die in a dramatic raid. It dies quietly, when people with something to tell decide it is no longer safe to tell it.

Then there is the new breed of journalist. The publishers’ lawyer was careful to say her clients are “legacy media,” adding that “there has been some debate over citizen journalists”. That debate matters.According to the Act, if a journalist collects and publishes any information about an individual, they must obtain that person’s consent. Pragya Singh, a Delhi-based journalist highlights the impracticality of this requirement. “I regularly interview people and gather information on the ground. It’s unrealistic to expect me to carry consent forms and get them signed before every interaction,” she says.

India’s independent YouTubers, blog writers, podcasters and X-based fact-checkers have no legal department, no insurance and no Ambani-sized balance sheet. They also do much of the work that large newsrooms have become reluctant to do. If a company with a compliance team finds the law unworkable, a lone reporter with a phone will not even try to comply. The most likely outcome is that they will simply stop. A law that can be survived only by the rich will make journalism a rich man’s profession.

The government’s own conduct sharpens the worry. Private actors must give notice and take consent, while the state’s exemptions, for purposes such as the “security of the State,” are wide and need not be disclosed to the citizen. When the rules for the watched are strict and the rules for the watcher are loose, that is not privacy protection. It is an asymmetry of power that is called privacy.

None of this means data protection is unnecessary. Indians do need protection from data leaks, from profiling and from the casual sale of their information. But a good privacy law protects the individual from the powerful. It must not become a tool for the powerful to hide from the public.

The Supreme Court has listed the matter for hearing on November 17. The remedy is not complicated: a clear, enforceable exemption for journalism, one that covers freelancers and citizen reporters as well as large newsrooms, protection for the confidentiality of sources, and a restoration of the public-interest test in the RTI Act.

A democracy can protect privacy and the press together. The test of this law will be whether it is willing to.