Screws tightened on news portals' sourced material

HA NOI — General news portals which want to present information from another source have to ensure they use accredited and reliable sources and feature accurate quotes, according to a latest decree on web portal management published by the Ministry of Information and Communications.

A formal source of information, as defined in the decree, includes official websites of Vietnamese newspapers or web portals of Party and Government offices in accordance with the Journalism and Intellectual Property Laws.

News portals which copy original sources will have to list the original publication, name of author and date of publication.

According to Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen, from the ministry's Administration for Radio Broadcast, Television and E-Information, which compiled the decree, this requirement is to address a situation where the content of an original news story is published, but is later modified by web portals.

"This will require the web portals to be more responsible with news they collect," she said.

This decree also prohibits general news portals to provide, transmit, advertise or put direct web links to illegal sources of information. They include the utilisation and provision of information that violates privacy, intellectual property or contains the depiction of sexually explicit activities and erotic content.

Nguyen Hoang Tuan Anh, external affairs director of the VNG Company, owners of a popular news portal www.zing.vn, said the requirement to only use information from formal sources appeared to limit the news portals activities.

He said: "The limitation should be imposed based on the fields of information rather than on the sources. For example, when it comes to politics or religion, I agree that we should be cautious when publishing related stories. But how about entertainment news such as football and fashion, I don't think a variety of sources of such information does more harm than good."

Organisation and enterprises which own the web portals have to submit a report on their activity every 12 months, while the interval for report submission of those which are the providers of social network services is six months.

Anh, whose company also provides a social network service, said it was necessary for providers to submit reports so that the authorities could track their activities.

"The data collected from providers will help policy-makers develop sound policies that will reflect the rapid development of this new type of web service."

Managers of web portals are also required to be of Vietnamese nationality and permanent residence in Viet Nam and holding a bachelors degree is mandatory.

The regulation will take effect from September. — VNS