Editors Guild seeks MeitY clarification as DPDP rules omit media exemptions

The Editors Guild of India has raised concerns that the newly notified Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules, 2025 fail to provide explicit safeguards for journalistic work, potentially placing additional compliance burdens on newsrooms and affecting press freedom.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Guild said the Rules leave several questions unanswered for journalists and media organisations, despite earlier assurances from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) that bona fide journalistic activity would be excluded from the scope of the DPDP Act, 2023.

The Guild noted that it had previously flagged significant gaps in the 2023 legislation, including the dilution of the Right to Information framework and the absence of a clear exemption for journalism. It said the new Rules do not resolve those issues and continue to maintain “ambiguous obligations around consent”.

According to the Guild, representatives of MeitY met press bodies in July 2025 and assured them that journalistic activity would not fall under the Act’s consent and processing requirements. Following that meeting, the Guild and several media organisations submitted a detailed list of 35 questions and case-based scenarios seeking clarity on issues related to consent, exemptions, data retention, research, and reporting in the public interest. The Guild said it has yet to receive a formal response.

It warned that, without explicit exemptions or detailed guidance, routine reporting could be interpreted as “processing” personal data requiring consent, an interpretation that, it said, risks creating a chilling effect on newsgathering and accountability journalism. Such ambiguity, the Guild added, could also lead to confusion and excessive compliance measures within newsrooms.

While reiterating that data protection and privacy are vital policy priorities, the Guild stressed that these aims must be balanced with the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and the public’s right to know. It urged MeitY to “urgently issue a clear and categorical clarification” exempting journalistic work from the DPDP framework to avoid any inadvertent erosion of press freedom.