Press freedom protected under Srikrishna panel's data protection Bill

Journalists will be exempted from seeking the consent of individuals before collecting and reviewing their personal data to be used in a news report

The country's first proposed data protection law seeks to provide freedom to journalists writing news reports or opinion pieces that might contain personal and "sensitive personal data".  

The draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018, has put data gathered for 'journalistic purposes' in the exempt list. This means the provisions of the proposed Bill will not apply to journalists and, in some cases, citizen journalists.

However, journalists will have to adhere to the code of ethics prescribed by the Press Council of India (PCI) or "any media self-regulatory organisation".

A committee of experts, led by former Supreme Court judge B