National Union of Journalists secretary-general Teh Athira Yusof said it was important that the term “disinformation” be used without bias.

“We need a media council as soon as possible because there should be a more diverse, multi-stakeholder approach to determining what constitutes disinformation.

“Independent bodies, such as journalists’ organisations and civil society groups, should work with the government to identify and tackle disinformation to ensure a fair, unbiased, and conducive media environment,” she told FMT.

The information department recently moved to restrict media card validity to six months for journalists from recently registered online news outlets.

In a statement, the department said this measure aims to combat disinformation and verify the activity and legitimacy of the media outlets in question.

Centre for Independent Journalism executive director Wathshlah Naidu said allowing the government to exclusively determine what constitutes false information could lead to the abuse of media passes to silence critics.

“A media council could assume these responsibilities and draft the code of conduct.

“This approach prevents any government in power from solely determining the truthfulness of media reports.”

Wathshlah also said the shortened validity period was not enough time to accurately judge whether new news outlets were spreading disinformation.

She said restricting media access based on adherence to a code of ethics and evaluating whether they are spreading disinformation represents a significant overreach of government power over the media.