By abhay mokashi

It is the duty of a journalist to ensure that every bit of information has to be checked and crossed checked for factuality, before it is published. The old school of thought rule of journalism is: When in doubt, check out or else leave out.

In the days of convergence and the use of technology, there is a cut-throat competition among journalists and media persons (since some of the are not journalists, even if the masquerade as one) to be the first to publish the information that they get. They try to publish their information in real time. Once published, it is news, true or fake.

Fake news itself can be categorised as unintentional or deliberate and mischievous. A good journalist may fall a prey to fake news and would unintentionally publish it, believing it to be true.  Often a piece of information is true at the time of filing of the report, but things may change later. For example, the health of an eminent person. At the time of filing of the report the health of an individual may be ‘critical’, but the same person may be in good health a few hours later. In this case the journalist cannot be said to have spread fake news.

Sometimes, there is a genuine error, giving the situation in which journalists work. Of course, this is no justification for errors. A national daily once published a photograph of a person, who had committed suicide. The lady who committed suicide and the lady whose photo was published had the same name, this led to the selection of the wrong photograph. This was in days, before internet. With internet search, the danger of such a thing happening is high. The doctor, whose photograph was wrongly used in the suicide report, walked into the newspaper office with a smile and merely sought a clarification in the next day’s edition, lest people believed that she was dead!

Several good journalists have been victims of news, that changed after it was published. This author can recall at least two such incidents in his career.

In the first case, the roof of an industrial unit in Belapur had crashed on a day, which saw heavy rain in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. This writer manged to reach the spot. A very senior police officer from the IPS cadre, told the writer that he suspected that 200 people trapped under the debris must be dead, looking at the nature of the crash. On the basis of this information, a report was filed in a national daily. Luckily the next day, it was learnt that not more than 20 persons had died in the crash. This was indeed good news, that the number of dead was far less, but the earlier report was proved to be false. The reporter did not blame the police officer and took the blame on himself.

In another incident, this writer had reported that then Maharashtra Chief Minister Sharad Pawar has submitted his resignation to Congress president Rajiv Gandhi. This was carried in a Mumbai evening newspaper. However, Pawar continued to be the chief minister for long time after that. It was deemed that the news was fake, as the headline had said: Pawar resigns.

The story was clear that he had submitted his resignation to the party president, leaving it for the party president to send it to the Maharashtra governor for acceptance. Rajiv Gandhi did nothing of that sort, so the report was correct at the time.

These incidents have come up in the light of the sedition cases filed by the Karnataka government against journalists Rajdeep Sardesai and Mrinal Pande, apart from few others. The charge against Rajdeep Sardesai is that he gave a fake news report stating that a farmer was killed in police firing. Though he published this information, he later retracted it and expressed an apology.

Rajdeep is at fault for giving that information without proper verification, but does not invite a case of sedition. It is to be noted that several governments led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have been slamming sedition cases on journalists and social activists.

Sedition is a serious offence, but the legal provisions of sedition need to be reviewed, if not scrapped. Section 124A of Indian Penal Code describes sedition as any action that brings or attempts to bring hatred or contempt towards the government of India. So, the section speaks of hatred towards the government, not towards the nation.

Hatred towards the government can arise due to its anti-people actions. If any government keeps taking anti-people stand time and again, the people cannot be expected to love it. The dictionaries define hatred as strong or intense dislike. There is bound to be hatred towards the government at some point of time or the other, unless it is an absolutely benevolent.

In any country there are bound to be people, who hate the government in power and India is no exception. 

Many of those in power in the country today, have hated the Congress governments in the past; they have hated Indira Gandhi, when she was in power and today, yet even during the Emergency section 124A was not used the way it is being invoked today. Currently, wherever there is non-BJP government in the state, BJP leaders hold the state government in contempt and issue statements exhibiting it. These acts have not invited sedition charges and should not invite against such leaders.

In a democracy, the people have a right to hold the government in contempt, they also have the right to topple the government in a democratic manner. However, leaders who survive on sycophancy, cannot stand any criticism and the current rulers are no exception.

Since Section 124A does not speak of holding the nation in contempt, it needs to be scrapped. But, as long as it is in the law book, the ruling parties in the country should not make its use so common, even if they wish to use it to silence their o