Fake news checks are on slippery grounds

By Manish Anand

At a time of polarized audiences, which label inconvenient facts as fake with no accompanying necessity for substantiation, it’s alarming that the executive is seeking to trespass into a sensitive area that may have much wider ramifications of the functioning democracy.

The Centre set up a ‘Fact Check Unit’ within the Press Information Bureau in 2019, and the government’s only official statement made in parliament on its functioning stated that the new entity busted “1160 fake news while acting on 37000 actionable queries of the citizens”. Karnataka now is seeking to replicate the Centre’s fact check unit to bust fake news.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had in a written reply to parliament said that the fact check unit works on the principle of find, assess, create and target. It had also stated that the unit is manned by the PIB officials.

The template before Karnataka is certainly the Centre’s fact check unit. But Karnataka Minister Priyank Kharge has assured the Editors Guild of India that the state government would work out an arrangement with consultations without taking up the role of fact checker for itself.

But the press bodies need not rest on assurances, for the executive usurping a role of check on media already has a precedent set by the Centre and the arrangement may become a fait accompli in the absence of the judicial remedy.

The same fact check unit of the PIB had called an investigative story in a medical college in New Delhi carried by a prominent daily fake despite the report carrying voices on record. The PIB consists of the Indian Information Officers, and they essentially man ministries as their information officers. They take it as their principal job to ensure that there is no critical coverage of the ministries.    

Incidentally, the government chose not to inform parliament if the ministry had prepared any manual or standard operating procedure to track fake news. Apparently, the exercise runs the risk of becoming vulnerable to subjective judgment of a few individuals. It’s also well known within the media fraternity that the PIB itself is short on manpower.

Yet, the reality of fake news cannot be dismissed. The social media platforms are being used at will by vested interests with twisted and distorted facts to achieve their aims. The toxicity of the content on the social media platforms was partly blamed for the communal violence in Nuh, Haryana.

In the age of YouTubers working as media persons in lanes and bylanes of cities and villages, who may not be acquainted with the various facets of news reporting, there appears the case of genuine journalism also facing the intrusive executives actions to sit in judgment. This should clearly be a case of conflict of interests, for the executive by nature of the functioning democracy is liable to public scrutiny, which is exercised through the media.

It may be noted that there exists entities such as Press Council of India which deal with the affairs of the functioning of the media. That such entities are under staffed is surely a matter of concern, which should attract attention of the government. Also, it’s certainly outlandish to claim that there exists no checks on misreporting by the press.

In her second tenure as chief minister of Delhi, Sheila Dikshit had successfully found redressal against a news reportage which had claimed that she had been “rapped on the knuckle by the party high command”, with the publication and the concerned reporter getting cautioned.

The PIB also knows that a reporter dreads the rejoinder the most, as he or she is liable to defend the story with proof once it’s challenged by the officials. This mechanism has worked well in the past, and has acted as check on the reporters working with news publication outlets. There appears a strong case that the PIB has been cold to its core function to facilitate the media persons in accessing news and when faced with critical news the automated response is to hide behind the claims of fake news.  This may also be for the reason that the PIB is too understaffed to deal with massive expansion of the news outlets. Or, it may also be a case for the PIB not being adequately empowered with technology to deal with incidents of misinformation.

The Karnataka government should know that the remedy lies with existing arrangements. Officials are already have the tools of existing laws to deal with malicious contents. Remedy may lie in press wings of governments becoming more agile in their functions.

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