“Trust takes years to build, seconds to break and forever to repair”
The 21st century has proven itself to be the golden era, in terms of the rapid progress in all the countries. In every country, each and every sector- railways, defense, education, agriculture, has been enhanced over the years. Media works as the most powerful tool nowadays by providing us with the strongest and weakest points, and the annual agenda of a country. However, it is not a new revelation that most of the fuss we are fed, is entirely fake.
In a developing nation, such as ours, journalism is highly influenced by politics. When strikes, elections or flash mob protests take place, the news which common people are engaged with is heavily politicized. The days of impartial news reporting are pretty much over. It could be well observed that some news channels are politically biased. Hence, the majority of the reports are partial. Fox News channel is biased towards the Republican party in the US, and MSNBC clearly favors the Democratic party. These reports are not absolute for sure.
Misleading headlines is the worst that newspapers do to a reader’s trust. Media portrays every second news with a very misleading title, in order to make it appealing. As a result, people are left fooled and frustrated, after going through the whole report. Bollywood gossips on news channels and page 3 on papers are the most moulded stories of all times. A large section of the society is quite interested in reading information like that, thus, in turn, they benefit the publishers, irrespective of the genuineness of the report.
Another source of crime reports is Savdhaan India, Gumraah, Crime Patrol which run on entertainment channels, but claim that their content is based on true stories. As per me, these are the most dangerous reports that people take into account. There was a period when groups discussed joyful events, while now, most of the discussions revolve around crime episodes. Such episodes provide ideas to commit a clean crime.
All these things have created an atmosphere of distrust within people who believe that true knowledge is power and fake news has ruined the sanity of such power and damaged a reader’s intellect. In order to get rid of this distrust, a solid layer of belief should be engraved within the society.
To do this, firstly all readers should be well aware of the fact that most of the news is nothing but avoidable junk. Many people still do not know that they are being fed the wrong information. Information plays a key role in national fraternity. Therefore, awareness must be spread about the reality of any news that is shown. An organization of highly well-informed people can be set up to interest common people, in training them to differentiate between real and fake news. Also, this would weaken the TRP of such content through a message to the media, that we, the viewers and readers of news, will not tolerate any nonsense.
A Wrong Information Works No Less Than Junk Food For The Gut Of The Brain
The young generation of all the countries spends most of its time on social media. It is a known fact that political parties and celebrities have their own social media managers who look out to influence online users. Such sponsored reports are completely biased and there is no proof for them to be real. People are often seen fighting on comment threads, and sometimes, those arguments are just blown out of proportion. The power of youth should not be wasted on such trash. Means to check such fake news must be maintained by websites.
Having the option of autocorrecting fake news or deleting it, would be very helpful. Also, elders must keep an eye on what influences their children. If a piece of information is found provocative or unreal, it must be reported by online users immediately. Online portals must be considered reliable only after putting them to multiple tests. This will help real news portals gain prominence on the internet. Also, this will help the youth believe in what is truest to knowledge.
Calls and messages related to jobs, lottery worth crores, are a whole new level of lies. Although the government runs advertisements to avoid them, greed drags people to fall into this pit. As a result, many true calls from banks and offices are avoided. Many job opportunities are left untouched. Strict checking is the need of the hour. A very helpful solution would be applying for an RTI to know which company has sent you an offer. RTI officials have to be very active.
The discussion platforms on news channels, intentionally target particular religions and communities every other day. This often creates unnecessary societal and communal rifts. A particular religion or caste is continuously made to feel isolated in our nation because of this. Broadcasting rules must make it very clear that no religion or community must be targeted under any circumstances by any media. It is not wrong to discuss national issues regularly, but dissecting a religion on national television, again and again, can cause serious problems, which can be detrimental to our nation harmony.
All I want to say in the end is, that the information that media spreads is the tool on which our moral, social and national machinery works. Oiling it with truth and clearing the clutters of fakeness is highly important for mankind. And to do this, strict rules must be made by BCCI, awareness must be spread among common people, a powerful organization of well-informed people must be made to keep in check whether a report shown is real or not.
RTI offices must be made active. In this era of fake news, to restore the trust of the public, we have to really resist our urges to read catchy gossip columns and train ourselves to discard distrustful news channels.