Ministry of Information and Broadcasting warns media over betting advertisements

After some English and Hindi newspapers published advertisements of betting websites against advisories, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Thursday issued a fresh warning to media entities and online advertisement intermediaries not to publish such content.

The fresh advisory invited the attention to two previous advisories in June and October last year, strongly advising media to refrain from transmitting such content, including their depiction as news websites or such other activities in a surrogate manner.

The Ministry has also objected to the promotion by a specific betting platform encouraging the audience to watch a sports league on its website, which prima facie appears to be in violation of the Copyright Act, 1957.

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The advisory said betting and gambling is an illegal activity and hence advertisements/promotion of such activities directly or indirectly on any of the media platforms falls foul of the various statutes, including under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, the Press Council Act 1978 and Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 among others.

Emphasising on the legal obligation as well as the moral duty of the media, the advisory referred to the Norms of Journalistic Conduct of the Press Council which mentioned that “newspapers should not publish an advertisement containing anything which is unlawful or illegal and that "the newspapers and periodicals should scrutinise the advertisement inputs from ethical as well as legal angles in view of the editor’s responsibility for all contents including advertisement, under Section 7 of PRB Act, 1867. Revenue generation alone cannot and should not be the sole aim of the Press, juxtaposed with much larger public responsibility”.

"In spite of the above very clear position, the Ministry has been informed of recent instances where news publishers, including mainstream English and Hindi newspapers, have published/printed advertisements/promotional content of betting sites/platforms which are clearly violative of the statutes and the various norms/guidelines issued thereunder as also goes against the very spirit of the advisory" issued by the Ministry, the advisory said.

It said the Ministry takes "strong exception to such practices" and urges all stakeholders, including the media platforms and the various online advertisement intermediaries, to immediately refrain from showing such advertisements/promotional content in any form whatsoever".

"In the event news publishers, etc., are found to be not adhering to the aforementioned advisory, the government would be constrained to take appropriate action under the various statutes," it added.