Combating Fake News in Social Media

WikiLeaks’ founder says “If journalism is good, it is controversial by its nature”. The lines echo in my head constantly and make much sense every time I scroll through my phone, reading news with melodramatic headlines trying to get viral by sounding controversial.

- Rashida Tapadar

The definition or understanding of melodramatic is, without any doubt, relative and that is why the buyers of fake news are queued in line to ‘share and like’ without a question or doubt in mind. The sad part of it all is now we have the liberty to ‘create’ media houses at one click without any kind of requirement of equipped manpower, or a physical office or even a team to work with. A system and an internet connection can do it all and when asked about responsible reporting, you might as well get a response saying, “come again?” from such ‘media’ houses.

So, can everything that is controversial be good? Undoubtedly, one can say ‘most things which are controversial in today’s world are not true’ and everyone believes that to be controversial, lies or distorted information are a ‘must’. This article is basically to eliminate this ‘idea’ of some news portals and agencies. If you dare to tell the truth, you will standout and subsequently will have many more followers compared to the ‘creators’ of news. Don’t create but report that which needs reporting and analysis.

The sad state of affairs of social media news reporting is not only a liability on the established media houses and the citizens at large, but more so with schools and colleges which are preparing the future citizens who will be entering this irresponsible, unethical world of news reporting through social media platforms which are mushrooming and rapidly multiplying in India.