The Hanoi’s Department of Information and Communications (HDIC) has recently fined four news portals approximately VND90 million (US$3,900) for violating regulations on delivering news on the Internet.

One domain was also revoked during the investigations taken in the first half of this year.

The violations include publishing and disseminating media works without the consent of authors, and running news websites without a license.

Director of the Hanoi’s Department of Information and Communications (HDIC) Nguyen Thanh Liem. Photo: The Hanoi Times

In an interview with The Hanoi Times, HDIC’s Director Nguyen Thanh Liem said that in the HDIC’s investigations of nearly 700 licensed news portals taken between January and June, up to 151 sites or 22.4% were inactivate.

In addition, 25 other general news portals were required to suspend due to violations on management and information publishing on the Internet, Liem said.

According to the official, the most common offense that some pages commit is to usurping authorship of news published on printed media and other news agencies then make them their own. The action is called “washing sources”, defying the authorities and causing public outrage.

More seriously, the responsible people of the pages are unavailable when they were summoned by the authorities.

The HDIC functions as a specialized agency monitoring the operations of the press, including e-information, and counseling the Hanoi People’s Committee in policymaking for the media industry.

Liem said that the agency will tighten control over printed newspapers, e-news pages, and social networks, disseminate the Party and State’s policies on media, and boost the use of homegrown social networks.

In Vietnam, a news website is an information product produced by agencies, organizations, and enterprises, providing general information by posting access links to press sources or citing original sources in accordance with law on intellectual property.