Skip to main content

Being factual in the post-truth era (Hindu)

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif, for all practical purposes, recently threatened Israel with a retaliatory nuclear attack, in response to a fake news report that the Israelis had said they would use nuclear weapons against Pakistan if it sent ground troops to Syria. Earlier, a man fired an assault rifle in a pizzeria in Washington, D.C. after reading online that it was involved in a child trafficking ring linked to Hillary Clinton. In India, a fake story said there was a GPS tracking chip embedded in the new Rs.2,000 note. Fake news — the deliberate creation of factually incorrect content to mislead people for some gain — is becoming an increasingly serious problem. And tackling it is imperative in a perpetually wired and click-happy world. Everyone with an Internet connection and a social media presence is now a content generator. Access to the web at all times on mobile platforms has raised expectations for real-time news and constant entertainment, and competition among websites and social media platforms has resulted in the proliferation of ‘clickbait’. With platforms such as Facebook, that have hundreds of millions of users, news, fake or otherwise, spreads rapidly.

While the news may be fake, its impact is real and potentially far-reaching. A recent study from the Pew Research Center found that approximately two-thirds of Americans felt ‘fake news’ had caused a “great deal of confusion” over current affairs. The abundance of fake stories during the U.S. presidential elections has raised concerns about their impact on election results. This has set alarm bells ringing in Europe where several countries are about to go to the polls. Germany is considering imposing a €500,000 fine on Facebook if it shares fake news, and an Italian regulator has asked European countries to set up an agency to combat fake news. The danger is that instruments to identify fake news could become muzzles on opinion and speech. Therefore, while such regulation is needed, it is vital that it comes from within. Social media and news organisations can regulate themselves at different levels, most importantly through rigorous internal editorial and advertising standards. Industry-wide measures, such as adherence to a charter of standards on fake news and imposition of fines on organisations falling short of these, could be done. Meanwhile, the broad contours of what constitutes fake news need to be defined. News and social media companies have a moral responsibility to ensure that they do not, directly or otherwise, deliberately misrepresent the facts to their audiences and pass them off for news. If it is a post-truth world we inhabit, this becomes especially important.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NGT terminates chairmen of pollution control boards in 10 states (downtoearth,)

Cracking the whip on 10 State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) for ad-hoc appointments, the National Green Tribunal has ordered the termination of Chairpersons of these regulatory authorities. The concerned states are Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Rajasthan, Telangana, Haryana, Maharashtra and Manipur. The order was given last week by the principal bench of the NGT, chaired by Justice Swatanter Kumar. The recent order of June 8, 2017, comes as a follow-up to an NGT judgment given in August 2016. In that judgment, the NGT had issued directions on appointments of Chairmen and Member Secretaries of the SPCBs, emphasising on crucial roles they have in pollution control and abatement. It then specified required qualifications as well as tenure of the authorities. States were required to act on the orders within three months and frame Rules for appointment [See Box: Highlights of the NGT judgment of 2016 on criteria for SPCB chairperson appointment]. Having

High dose of Vitamin C and B3 can kill colon cancer cells: study (downtoearth)

In a first, a team of researchers has found that high doses of Vitamin C and niacin or Vitamin B3 can kill cancer stem cells. A study published in Cell Biology International showed the opposing effects of low and high dose of vitamin C and vitamin B3 on colon cancer stem cells. Led by Bipasha Bose and Sudheer Shenoy, the team found that while low doses (5-25 micromolar) of Vitamin C and B3 proliferate colon cancer stem cells, high doses (100 to 1,000 micromolar) killed cancer stem cells. Such high doses of vitamins can only be achieved through intravenous injections in colon cancer patients. The third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, colon cancer can be prevented by an intake of dietary fibre and lifestyle changes. While the next step of the researchers is to delineate the mechanisms involved in such opposing effects, they also hope to establish a therapeutic dose of Vitamin C and B3 for colon cancer stem cell therapy. “If the therapeutic dose gets validated under in vivo

SC asks Centre to strike a balance on Rohingya issue (.hindu)

Supreme Court orally indicates that the government should not deport Rohingya “now” as the Centre prevails over it to not record any such views in its formal order, citing “international ramifications”. The Supreme Court on Friday came close to ordering the government not to deport the Rohingya. It finally settled on merely observing that a balance should be struck between humanitarian concern for the community and the country's national security and economic interests. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions, one filed by persons within the Rohingya community, against a proposed move to deport over 40,000 Rohingya refugees. A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, began by orally indicating that the government should not deport Rohingya “now”, but the government prevailed on the court to not pass any formal order, citing “international ramifications”. With this, the status quo continues even though the court gave the community liberty to approach i