Dangerous Trend Of Govt Agencies Harassing & Intimidating Independent Media Must Stop: Editors Guild

The Editors Guild said the teams of IT officials visited the offices of two organisations and conducted investigations throughout the day on September 10.

(Representative Image/ Getty)

New Delhi: Deeply disturbed about the Income Tax “surveys” at the offices of news websites http://NewsClick.in  and http://Newslaundry.com, the Editors Guild of India has said this dangerous trend of government agencies harassing and intimidating independent media must stop as it undermines our constitutional democracy.  

The Editors Guild said the teams of IT officials visited the offices of two organisations and conducted investigations throughout the day on September 10.

“The Editors Guild of India is deeply disturbed about the Income Tax “surveys” at the offices of news websites http://NewsClick.in  and http://Newslaundry.com,” the Guild tweeted.

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“While they were officially labelled as “surveys” by the IT officials, but as per the statements issued by Abhinandan Sekhri, co-founder of Newslaundry, this was a clear intimidatory and blatant attack on their eights, and therefore press freedom,” the Editors Guild said in a statement.

“It is learnt that the IT team made clones of Sekhri’s mobile and laptop, as well as some other machines, and no hash value was given to them. This is clearly beyond the mandate of surveys as defined under section 133 of the Income Tax act, which only allows the data pertaining to the investigation to be copied, and certainly not personal and professional data of journalists,” the Editors Guild added.

The Editors Guild said it is also in “violation of procedures laid out in the Information Technology Act, 2000”.

The Guild said it is deeply concerned that such indiscriminate seizure of journalists’ data, which could include sensitive information such as details of resources, stories under works and other journalistic data, is in violation of free speech and freedom of press.

“This was the second visit by an Income Tax team at the office of Newslaundry, the earlier one being in June. In case of NewsClick, the Enforcement Directorate had conducted raids at their office as well as homes of their senior journalists and officials in February 2021. Both NewsClick and Newslaundry have been critical of policies and functioning of the Union Government,” the Editors Guild said.

The Editors Guild further said the Income Tax raids were conducted earlier in July this year at the offices of country’s leading newspaper Dainik Bhaskar as well as a Lucknow-based news channel Bharat Samachar against the backdrop of some very “critical coverage” by both news organisations on the government’s handling of the pandemic.

The Editors Guild demanded that great care and sensitivity should be shown in all such investigations so as to not undermine the rights of journalists and media organisations.

“Further, to ensure that such investigations are conducted with the prescribed rules and that they don’t degenerate into instruments of harassment to intimidate independent media,” the Editors Guild said.