The Government proposed a law to strip individuals and media organizations of their accreditation a few days back which one needs, to go to government functions and meet government officers or their offices for information on various activities, if they received a complaint of reporting so called fake news, a term that is still fuzzy. It also shelved the idea just 48 hours after its introduction. What then is fake news? Is the news routinely dished out either in the print or the electronic media fake? Or is the way it is presented fake? Are results of an investigative journalistic brilliance presented in a certain context fake? Can the context be manipulated to present a fake news as the truth? Is freewheeling data on social media fake or when the same hurts an individual is fake?
Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for the purpose of profit or influence. When a law is made to curb supposedly fake news, is it trying to curb, the outcome of a journalistic effort at gathering truth, that may not always be convenient to the powers that be, or the one that is masquerading as news and data on the social media? If it is the first, every right-thinking Indian must take note of the tweet of Shekhar Gupta “Make no mistake, this is a breath-taking assault on mainstream media,” and if it is the second, then one can only predict the consequences at one’s own peril.
Many years back, innocent curiosity and the sheer din of TV channels, made me ask my journalist friend, as to what constituted news and how does one define it? He narrated a story which rings in an eerie silence even today. He was once covering an unfortunate event where three people lost their lives in a blast in the vicinity. His mobile rang in the midst of the mayhem and he was asked to cover another event in another location. He protested with his editor and sought reason for the same. His editor shot back, saying the other place had an even bigger tragedy and that more people died there. My friend was lost in silence and is still probably looking for an answer. News unfortunately is reduced to entertainment and shock, the latest in the disruption being fake.
Fake news dates back to many thousands of eons. We are all aware of Mahabharata’s famous anecdote “Aswathama hatha Kunjaraha” where an elephant named Aswathama was killed by Bheema. However, in order to overpower Drona, it was narrated to him as though his son, by the same name was killed. News or new information must be impartial, neutral and objective, However, it is seldom reported without political bias. Changing values in the system have given way to sensationalism, the disproportionate focus on, and exaggeration of, emotive stories for public consumption has led to ‘tabloid journalism’. The already thin line between news and gossip seems to be giving way, with the onslaught of social media.
Today, the term “breaking news” has become trite, as commercial broadcasting in the Country is available almost 24 hours a day, using live communications satellite technology to bring current events into consumers’ homes as the events unfold. Events that used to take hours or days to become common knowledge, in towns or in nations are fed instantaneously to consumers via radio, television, mobile phone, and the Internet. Though technology has played a major role in the process, the “news” itself has somewhere died a quiet death. Social media takes over instantaneously and the so-called breaking news travels with all and sundry’s twisted imagination, as it travels with the context changing by the second. No one would dare to hazard a guess as to when the breaking news has come to become fake news.
Facebook, located in the Silicon Valley, on a street named ‘hackers’ way’, believes on a motto “Move fast and break things”. Don’t be constrained by current norms, like privacy. Norms can change. This is like free licence to propagate anything on the web with no authentication. In fact a top Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth seems to urge colleagues to focus on growth and connecting more people regardless of occasional “ugly” side effects like bullying and terrorism. The IT Act possibly cannot stifle innovators of ‘market place of ideas approach’. Freedom of speech allows us to say what we will, even if it’s false. Half-truths rule the roost though truth will eventually prevail. No wonder the difference between news and falsehoods is blurring.
Leaders all over the world would want to rule for ever. In that quest, they would use all available means to retain power. We know of several videos circulating on WhatsApp groups, and other social media sites either extolling the virtues of a certain individual or his party or defaming the opponents and their parties. Even social occurrences are packaged to hit the intended, with maximum effect. Are these true? Are these fabricated? They seem to work on the principle that repeated lies would eventually be taken as truth. If these are targeted at people, based on their individual preferences, as alleged to have been done, after a data analytics job of profiling people, the results can be devastating. What Cambridge Analytica did with the recent elections in US is just a case in point.
Interestingly, Philippines describes fake news as the malicious distribution of false news and other related violations, intending to cause panic, division, chaos, violence, and hate, or those which exhibit a propaganda to blacken or discredit one’s reputation and levied penalties such as imprisonment of one to six months and a fine of 800 to 4000 US dollars. This However, came out apparently to curb dissent to the Government.
Screenshots of tweets can be faked using a little of native intelligence. Many browsers will allow one to change the text in one’s local copy of a file, the text and images on a website that one’s browser has downloaded, to anything, one may like. For example, in a newspaper site, if one screenshots the altered result, it will even have the original source’s URL at the top, and look perfectly real. The damage that can be caused will be unthinkable. In 2015, a faked Bloomberg article claiming that Twitter had a US$31-billion takeover offer shifted the platform’s stock price, at least temporarily. In 2017, a group of Russian hackers staged an elaborate hoax in which they mocked up a faked version of the Guardian site, complete with a URL in which the ‘i’ in Guardian was replaced with the Turkish character ‘ı’. This be, as it may, when many mainstream journalists get grouped, with those peddling misinformation and flouting common standards are left frustrated, the Government will have to take note and curb the wannabes, without going overboard.
In a debate of curbing, dissent, curbing freedom on all our National Channels, we conveniently seem to have forgotten another aspect fake news for which even money is exchanged. Paid news or paid content which is so rampant through articles in newspapers, magazines and the electronic media that blatantly create favourable opinion for the institution or even individuals paying for it. This is actually an advertisement without calling it so. Over the years, neither the government nor any other regulator considered it a serious malpractice since it could deceive the citizens and even influence the voters during election times. It is another matter that the payment modes even violate tax laws and election spending laws. Democracy hinges on a fine thread of freedom of expression and freedom of speech. Paradoxically, we seem to accept paid news as legitimate but fake news illegitimate.