Fake news: ‘No need for new laws, just refine current ones’

In a six-page commentary published in the June edition of the Law Gazette, SMU Associate Professor of Law Warren B Chik argued against the need for new laws to deal with fake news, saying that the authorities should look instead at enhancing the Broadcasting Act and its subsidiary legislation for Internet content regulation. In particular, they should clarify the class licensing regime, which allows the authorities to demand websites hosting objectionable content be removed, and broaden it to include news aggregators, social media platforms that provide news feeds, and other similar content hosts. Authors of web content should also be held to some standard of “responsible speech” and an independent fact-checking mechanism, he wrote.