India's privacy law could shut down newsrooms, media groups tell court

‌The Indian government's ​privacy law, which would require journalists to seek consent from people they write ‌about, amounted to pre-censorship and could lead to newsrooms shutting down, media groups told the Supreme Court on Tuesday, starting the most high-profile ‌challenge against the legislation. A group of 21 news publishers, ‌including companies owned by billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, has challengedPrime Minister Narendra Modi's privacy law, arguing it would trample upon investigative work and allow ⁠New ​Delhi to identify journalists' ⁠sources, Reuters reported on Monday.

"It is changing the whole concept of ⁠what is news," Madhavi Goradia Divan, the lawyer for Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) ​told the judges. "Newsrooms will shut down, if we have ⁠to ask for permission...it's then a complete regime of pre-censorship."

The Supreme Court posted ⁠the ​case for next month. Media companies received assurances in an August meeting with the government that the law would ⁠protect press freedom, but not having a written carve-out for journalists like ⁠in the European ⁠Union, Singapore and Britain was alarming, the news publishers said in a filing earlier this month.