Ananya S Guha
It is fake news which is the talk nowadays. What is fake news? Ostensibly it is that kind of news doing the rounds, ‘going viral’ to use a contemporary classic phrase to pan emotions and to goad people into a willing suspension of belief or into believing something, or some news which is not true. That, is to put it mildly, dangerous and can impact society in the most deleterious ways. But, let us look at news. There is the sender and the receiver. While the sender has a responsibility towards the news sent o0t forwarded so has the one who receives the news/information. And, if the latter without critical thinking or a pause at its implications sends the news to someone else, then he/ she is lending it a tangible credibility? Or is it? The person may be forwarding the news to await a response, perforce with a riposte: is it correct? And wait for a mandate. However, the general feeling is that forwarding something comes with the expectation that it will be fast forwarded with an end to bring in the nuisance value.
Similarly there is misrepresentation of facts, to create a fabulous world, such as astrologers’ predictions, enormity of scientific discovery and inroads into personal lives of celebrities.
What then is news? Is it akin only to information, just as history is only parallel to facts? Because of information inundation, news is being hurled to everyone every second. How do we then distinguish the bad news from the good one, without a stain of prejudice or incitement?
That is not to say that without the internet there cannot be fake news. Fake news or rumours are as old as humankind with its innate urgency to tell stories. These stories can become lies, when they cease to edify or highlight a moral or ethical issue. That is the non creative aspect. The creative one is myth making, telling rather than merely stating and drawing parallels with cosmic significance. Unfortunately and, tragically we obfuscate news with the sensational and not through which human sustenance in terms of singular lessons of compassion are drawn.
Thus the word ‘ fake ‘ has gained a titillating currency and scourge in the world of news. But again, which news is important? A python consuming a woman in a South Asian country and its bizarre picture of the woman lying in it’s belly is news to critically discuss, or is it simply to cause a perverse excitement? The animal man world is an enigma and there is discontinuity between the two. Can this be a debate- the mysteries of the animal world, their ‘ thinking ‘ of the human, their rationality, their desires or fears. Yet this will be a news item for visual circulation. This is not fake news, this is raking news or to some ‘ breaking ‘ news.
This constant breaking has to be braked. It is not only the users of social media sites that are culpable of ‘ breaking ‘ news. Often it is articulated by educated people and the media to create doubts and as a result protests. News should be presented in a manner, which should lend credibility to interrogate. Interrogative news is absent, what is present are raucous political debates on news channels.
That then is a death warrant to dispassion and objective, sensible thinking. Taking a strict mono- sided view is a water tight compartment bursting at its seams. Then there is acrimony, hatred, vicious attacks. Dissent is hardly the word here. One can dissent without acrimony or without being acerbic.
We are slowly signing the death warrant of even dissent. Even dissent is not possible. What is required is ‘ being with us ‘ or ‘ being with them’. It is amazing to see the ingenuity of minds perpetrating falsity and falsification. Speaking out of context, messaging spurious and morphed photos are the signs of the times. Similarly the reinventing of history is another fad today, which is not less than fake news or rumour mongering of the highest order to rework passions and spout the culture of hate. Need I say more in the context of India at least?
News and facts; facts and information; mythical facts and misinformation; where are the dichotomies? Where are the multi layered possibilities to convert information, or for that matter facts into a high ordered reality of valuable, creative and original news? Fact is that originality has taken undercover and backseat to favour the scintillating and the rapacious. Analytical articles are not read, but television channels propagating discord are met with approbation and gleefully viewed. Poets and writers evoking responses to society are tripe. What kind of news do we want, in the pursuance of excitement, which in turn is divisive, what must we write or show to spell accord, rather than the stench and miasma of discord?