Why we can't trust what we read and watch today
As a journalist who began his career in the mid-1990s, the term “fake news” creates mixed feelings in me. Firstly, how can news be fake? If fake, then it's not news. And why would anyone bother to associate it with a word as sacrosanct as “news”.
But in today’s world, “fake news” is not an oxymoron. It is the harsh reality that we face every moment. Unfortunately, fakery and news now go hand in hand. So there you have a new genre. Whether one is in media or outside media, we are all victims of this “Frankenstein”.
But many in the mainstream and so-called responsible media may not agree with the word “Frankenstein” as they would argue “fake news is not our creation”. These media outlets point fingers at politicians and their sycophants - “bhakts” - as the creator of disinformation or misinformation.
So, what is the definition of “fake news”? According to Cambridge dictionary, fake news is defined as “false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke”.
But websites that have come to the fore to debunk the barrage of misinformation have only targeted three things - politicians saying something which is not true, mainstream media saying something which is factually incorrect and contents which create communal tension between Hindus and Muslims, Dalits and non-Dalits. Most of these websites are slaying the content which are "wrong but majoritarian in nature".
But a simple estimate will show that these websites in a day tackle only four to five fake news items and their reach is only up to five to six million people, which are mostly the urban gentry.
This is miniscule in terms of internet penetration in rural India, especially with Tata, Jio and BSNL telecom networks. More than 95 per cent of the population remains untouched in this so-called “jihad” against “fake news”. Unlike the western world, India unfortunately have woken up late to the menace of fake news. We are way behind in terms of academic research that the Europeans and Americans have done so far on internet literacy and how to combat fake news.
The Americans faced the onslaught of fake news in the last presidential election. Nonetheless, dealing with fake news and systematic and sophisticated disinformation campaigns are always difficult in any democratic setup.
With major changes in the mediascape in the past few years and the way people consume news in India, youths are the biggest consumer of online news.
According to a survey by Pew Research Center in 2017, in the US, 93 per cent of the people access news online.
Although in India there is still a considerable number of loyal, conservative readers who depend on printed newspapers, the shift from print to online is growing faster among the younger generation. But a worrying trend in the US is the growing distrust of people in mass media to report "news fully, accurately and fairly". According to the Gallup Poll, the trust dropped from 53 per cent in 1997 to 32 per cent in 2016, with many Americans questioning the accuracy of their news.
Although the decline in trust on news media is dangerous for a democracy, these facts are positive for a nation because it at least knows, tracks and systematically records the change in patterns in a highly evolving democratic setup. Also, these machineries are far better than a country like India, which loves to live in denial.
The abysmally low media and internet literacy in India is one of the main factors that helped turn fake news into an epidemic today. With fast-growing mobile penetration, cheap internet connectivity and zero media literacy, large sections of Indians are just sitting ducks waiting to be bombarded by misinformation by the dishonest political class systematically manoeuvring and pushing propagandist ideologies.
Fake news is generated by such outlets in the garb of actual media sites to deceive the general public. These misinformation act well on the gullible human psyche that believes in a certain political ideology.
After the 2016 US presidential election, researchers found that automated bots played havoc on social media platforms to disseminate wrong information. But unlike the western world, in India - which is at a nascent stage of Artificial intelligence (AI) - deliberate human propaganda machineries are still more active when it comes to stoking the flames of disinformation from a flicker, especially among the vast number of naive internet users.
For instance, the recent incident of lynching of several people in Jharkhand following rumours of child kidnappings circulated on WhatsApp.
But the moot question here is, why is Indian mainstream media prone to fake news? The answer is simple: lack of due diligence and fact-checking. The solution is also simple: to follow the basic rule of thumb in journalism - accuracy. The often-given counter-excuse is the immense pressure of immediacy and "breaking news" cycle in a highly competitive media scenario.
But if we are to follow that, we will do injustice to our profession. It will rob us of our self-respect and credibility. We will eventually lose our freedom and end up becoming tools of the government machinery with restrictive regulation regime.
This fear is not exaggerated. The I&B ministry’s guidelines (which was later revoked) for accreditation of journalists in the name of regulating "fake news" is a grim reminder of the threat that is looming large over the Indian media and journalist fraternity.
With India heading towards its biggest political circus - the 2019 general election - it will be a litmus test for the Indian media to tackle the scourge of fake news, and come out as unbiased and indomitable.