Daily Times

With elections in offing, there would be a deluge of fake news. Many would be dubbed as RAW or CIA agents or blasphemers. There are not many organisations like Bytes for All who expose fake news.

Fake news follows a set pattern. They are immediately replicated and disseminated by trolls including well-reputed news organisations. Heretofore are a few bloomers of fake news. News18 English: Revealed: Pak Arming Hizbul Mujahideen with Chemical Weapons

LT Gen (Retd) GD Bakshi said, “It seems they (Kashmiri Mujahideen) are looking for a big terror attack. You (CNN-News18) have done great service by exposing this.” The news was followed by Asia Times, International Business Times, Financial Express, ‘Pakistanto launch Chemical Jihad on India?’

Gist of fake news (splashed in prestigious India Today, Hindu and other newspapers) is that Pakistan has tactical nuclear weapons that it would use in conventional war scenario. But Indian air force is capable of locating and destroying Pakistan nukes if and when ordered by government.

Add to the litany of fake news, Shahid Masood’s and Amir Liaquat Hussain’s `revelations (Herald March 2018, page 48), AWD news bulletins, Classified- Journal-Post `stories’ written by Janet Mayson, Web Desk or Allie Maddison videos uploaded for ‘as low as us $ 5’.

There is need to detect, expose and punish masterminds spreading fake national and international news. The government could carve out a source-verifying mechanism out of existing sources of Federal Investigation Agency (cyber wing) and Pakistan’s Media regulatory Authority.

SAMAN MALIK

Rawalpindi

Published in Daily Times, March 20^th 2018.