Fake news greatest challenge faced by media today: Fawad

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain said that the greatest challenge being faced by the modern media was dissemination of fake news.

Addressing a seminar, the minister said that the fake news phenomenon was created with the revolution in information technology and increase in media platforms. The minister said the international community will have to prepare some rules to counter fake news and the responsibility would have to be added with freedom of expression.

He was that there was a need for widespread debate on countering inside media organisations and there was a dire need of proper training to those involved in this business. The minister said that only a responsible media could be called an independent media.

He deplored that a section of media, especially on social media, was thriving on fake news and did not want any restriction on fake news and baseless propaganda. He said the United States, UK and European Union had introduced online security rules and there was a need to move towards this direction.

He said that recently fake news was spread on social media claiming that in Pandora Papers leaks, it was disclosed that the son of a politician whose family had a history of money laundering and fake bank accounts owned offshore companies. The private media, he said, picked up the news without verification and the news went viral.

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The minister said that former US President Barack Obama rightly said in 2013 that checking the flow of information was the biggest challenge of modern times as this was being used against political parties, governments and even countries.

He said that India had used non-political incidents for gaining political advantage and a network of over 785 fake websites was exposed last year which was linked with Indian news agency ANI and leading news channels used to malign Pakistan.

He said that the Indian media tried to exploit the Noor Muqaddam murder case and Greater Iqbal Park incident to portray that Pakistan was not safe for women. He said over 175 videos were generated daily from Indian websites and tens of thousands of tweets were done and intelligence networks of some neighbouring countries supported this campaign.

He said that even Pakistani media became part of this vilification campaign without knowing the facts. The minister said Delhi has been declared as rape capital of the world a couple of years back but India built a counter-narrative to give an impression that such incidents also happened in other parts of the world.

He said that during the recent crisis, in Afghanistan contradicting news was emerging but Pakistan tried to provide correct information to both national and international media outlets.