“Fake news” is the catch phrase of the moment! It was not a term used even two years ago, but now poses one of the severest threats to our cherished values of liberty, democracy and free debate. Significantly, the term was declared 2017’s word of the year by Collin’s Dictionary!
Fake news is a type of “yellow” or “paroxysmal” journalism that encapsulates deliberate disinformation or hoaxes spreadviaconventionalprint and broadcastnews media or online social media. Fake news is written and published with the intent to mislead the public in order to damage an entity or person and/or gain financially or politically byresorting to sensationalist, dishonest or fabricated content to increase readership, online sharingand internet click revenue. In February,2018, the BBC defined fake news as “false information distributed deliberately, usually for political or commercial purposes”. According to the popular fictional character Charles Foster Kane, “If the headline is big enough, it makes the news big enough.” During and after his presidential campaign and election, the firebrand American President Donald John Trump popularized the term “fake news” when he employed it to describe the negative press coverage of himself. What he perhaps meant by fake news was not news that was untrue, but news which had been artificially manufactured or inflated: “synthetic news” might be a better phrase!
Broadly speaking, fake newscan be said to fall in five categories :
1.Intentionally deceptive
These are news stories created entirely to deceive readers. The 2016 US election was rife with examples claiming that “x celebrity has endorsed Donald Trump”, when that was not the case.
- Jokes taken at face value
Humour sites such as the Onion or Daily Mash present fake news stories in order to satirise the media. - Large-scale hoaxes
Deceptions that are reported in good faith by reputable news sources. A recent example is the fake news that Antonino Fernández,the founder of Corona beer,produced by Cervecería Modelo in Mexico, made everyone in his native village a millionaire in his will. - Distorted reporting of real facts
Selectively-chosen but truthful elements of a story strung together to serve an agenda. Anexample of this is the PR-driven nutrition story that“x thing you thought was unhealthy is actually good for you”. - Stories where the “truth” is contentious
On issues where ideologies or opinions clash like territorial conflicts, there is sometimes no established baseline for truth. Reporters may be unconsciously partisan or perceived as such.
Fake news in India has had a deleterious effect on our nation’s unity and integrity leading to several episodes of violence between castes and religions and has interfered with public policies. It has often spread through the smartphone instant messengerWhatsApp,which has over 200 million monthly active users in the country. Here are some utterly shocking examples of fake news in India :
On 8thNovember, 2016, the Government went in for demonitisation which is popularly known as “DEMO”. Fake news went viral over WhatsApp that the note came equipped with a spying technology that tracked new notes 120 metres below the earth and spread to the country’s mainstream news outlets.
On 9th and 10th January,2018, a fake news was spread, mainly on social media, that from 20th January, 2018, public sector banks were to discontinue all free services.
On 5th June, 2018, a fake news report claimed that Indian “soldiers will have to spend their own money to buy uniforms and other clothes from civilian markets”.
On28thJune, 2018, mobs murdered a Tripura Government employee Sukanta Chakraborty, who was fighting against false news and rumour mongering.
On 1st July,2018, five people were lynched in Dhule district of Maharashtra over fake news triggered by social media posts that they were part of a gang of “child lifters”.
On 5th November,2018, a doctored video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi guiding a young child to a podium and encouraging her to say “Rahul Gandhi pappu hai” went viral on Facebook.
The Supreme Court of India has taken a very serious view of the indiscriminate spread of fake news. On 17th July,2018, a panel headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra recommended that Parliament pass a new “special law” that would instill fear in would-be attackers and demanded that police took immediate steps to investigate and curb the dissemination of “irresponsible and explosive” messages and videos that could incite mob violence and lynchings. The Court blamed rising intolerance and circulation of “fake news” for the spate of recent killings.On 28th August,2018, a Bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justices Rohinton Fali Nariman and Indu Malhotra agreed to examine the issue of fake news after an NGO alleged that WhatsApp was not implementing the laws and not co-operating with agencies to deal with the menace of fake news being spread through its platforms leading to lynching and other horrific incidents. The Bench issued notices to the Ministries of Law, Home Affairs, Electronics and IT, Finance and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, along with the Americancompany. The order came days after the Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad met WhatsApp Head Chris Daniels and requested him to set up a local corporate entity and find a technology solution to trace the origin of fake messages circulated through WhatsApp’s platform as well as appoint a grievance officer. I believe that WhatsApp has since appointed such grievance officer.
On 4th April,2018,Prime Minister Modi nipped in the bud a controversial press release issued by the Union Information & Broadcasting Ministry to penalise journalists allegedly involved in generating fake news. It was decided that fake news was not an issue in the government domain, but a subject for the Press Council of India and other self-regulatory bodies to handle. The Prime Minister’s Officedid not want an unsavoury controversy on freedom of speech in its hands. The Government lost no time to announce the withdrawal of the press release in an effort to end the impending crisis and its official statement read, “The Prime Minister has directed that the press release regarding fake news be withdrawn and the matter should only be addressed in the Press Council of India.” At the same time, the Government of India has mulled strict action against India heads of social media on their failure to check fake news in the wake of reports of many incidents of lynching, communal tension and abuse following circulation of fake news and communally sensitive articles and videos. On 29th August,2018, the issue of false news was discussed by a Committee of Secretaries, which was constituted by the Government following the lynching of nearly 40 people in just one year due to the circulation of fake news in popular social media platforms like WhatsApp. The panel, headed by the Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba, submitted its report to a Group of Ministers headed by the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, which in turn would submit its recommendations to Prime Minister Modi. It is understood that they have suggested tightening the law by inserting appropriate clauses in the Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure through parliamentary approval.
The social media platforms cannot remain innocent bystanders of the spread of “irresponsible and explosive messages”or evade their responsibilities. The focus must not just be on messaging platforms but also on search engines like Google. Intermediaries and search engines should do much more and publish what they are doing to counter the irrepressible spread of fake news.According to the EXPRESSTECH edition of the Indian Express dated 28th December,2018, the tech giant Microsoft, alarmed by the mammoth spread of fake news, is working on building “trusted” algorithms to control false news on its platforms like Bing Search engine and the professional networking website LinkedIn. DavidHeiner, Strategic Policy Advisor at Microsoft, has revealed that the problems Facebook and YouTube are facing with fake news today have alerted the tech companies the world over and Microsoft is right on the job in building Artificial Intelligence driven systems to fight back. He has asserted, “We are already working on a couple of such AI-powered initiatives towards Bing and Linkedin. We are also trying to forge tie-ups with trusted news sources and then indicate to users what is the source of the news and letting them make their own decisions”. The main challenge, according to him, are concerns regarding censorship and defining what is fake news. A very high percentage of people get news from Facebook and YouTube and both these major platforms are having troubles with handling fake news. In that connection, he noted, “In the meantime, we have to draw a line for giving too much power to tech companies – in order to figure out what is being presented to the users that often leads to utterly fake news which is injurious to democracy and the civil society.”
Twitter co-founder and CEOJack Patrick Dorsey arrived in Delhi on 12th November,2018 on his maiden visit to India and had a stimulating interaction with students of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. With Twitter becoming an important part of the socio-political and cultural discourse in the country, the microblogging site has emerged as a platform for sharing misinformation, polarised messages and fake news. When asked what steps social media companies should take to curb the spread of fake news in the run-up to the 2019 General Elections in India, Dorsey said, “Fake news or misinformation, as a category, is way too big. We need to scope it out entirely…Our job is to identify misinformation in any form…they can even be in the form of jokes. We need to identify the reason behind spreading that misinformation and whether it is intended to mislead. Once we do that, our job is to make sure it doesn’t spread.” He added that the tweets that called out erroneous messages of fake news often get more engagement than the fake news itself. Dorsey suggested the use of artificial intelligence to curb fake news but then laid out the problems associated with it including the inability of algorithms to fully understand and weed out misinformation. He concluded by saying, “The critical problem with fake news is when it leads people to take a particular action. We need to work on ways to prevent that from happening”.
As our economy and lives digitise increasingly, there is an imperative need for more education of the do’s and don’ts and the laws governing the conduct of participants. This needs to be carriedout by the apps and platforms in conjunction withthe Government.Platforms and intermediaries need to comply with data access demands legally made by our security agencies. Our law enforcement agencies need to detect and prosecute spam farmsand those who are responsible for spreading content that incites crimes and hatred. The cyberspace is replete with criminals and lawbreakers. Our enforcement of laws needs to get tougher and the prosecution of even a few offenders would send a stern message of deterrence to others. Technology is meant for the public good. But then technology is a double-edged sword and the celebrated Norwegian historian and political scientist Christian Lous Lange aptly observed, “Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.”So when technology is used with the intention to harm,intermediaries and the Government must close ranks and act decisively to ensure that our country, our democracy and our way of life don’t fall a prey to those ill winds that blow no good.In conclusion, I am irresistibly motivated to turn to the noteworthy observation of my illustrious friend Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, the Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting, Youth Affairs & Sports, in a 10th July,2018 televised interview, “The menace of fake news is a social one, and to defeat it, the society must act as one. People should be vigilant and self-regulate the information they choose to consume.”
ANOOP BOSE
Advocate,
Supreme Court of India
E-mail : [email protected]