‘New threat to journalists’: Police send notice to Kannada news website asking it to reveal source

The Bengaluru cybercrime police issued a notice to a Kannada news portal, the File, last week asking it to reveal the source of a document that it had reported on last year. 

According to the Hindu, the document was in connection with the “leak of an e-office file noting” of the state education department. The File had reported on the document’s contents, and published a photo of it, in November last year. The File’s story was a follow-up to the police arresting 60 people in September over a teacher recruitment scam.

The police notice was served on January 5 to the File’s founder and editor G Mahantesh, an investigative journalist. The News Minute said the notice asked for “name, address, mobile number and ID of the source who leaked the document”. Mahantesh said his website will not divulge their source.

Mahantesh told the Hindu this “poses a new threat to journalists”.

“As more and more departments are becoming paperless, any leak of a document – the source of most journalism – is being criminalised by misusing cybercrime laws,” he said. “This is being done in an attempt to threaten whistleblower officers inside the system and harass journalists at the same time.”

Indian law does not provide protection for whistleblowers. And if the latest iteration of India’s privacy bill is passed, journalists may be forced to reveal their sources if they’re unable to prove their reportage was in “public interest”. Read this report in Newslaundry for more.