Ministry of Information and Broadcasting warns against advertisements of betting and gambling.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Thursday issued fresh advisory where it advised media entities, media platforms and the online advertisement intermediaries to refrain from publishing advertisements/promotional content of betting platforms.

In the Advisory, the Ministry has taken strong exception to the recent instances of mainstream English and Hindi newspapers publishing advertisements and promotional content of betting websites. The Advisory has been issued to all media formats, including newspapers, television channels, and online news publishers with specific examples published in recent times.

Source-Ministry of I&B

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.

The advisory stated that 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 etc.

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 further 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.

The advisory stated that, if someone is found to be not adhering to the advisory, the government would be constrained to take appropriate action under the various statutes.