A sad tale of fake news in Pakistan

By
GEO NEWS
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Inarguably fake news has become the biggest challenge for the age of information. In a time imbued with the rapid influx of qualitative material through traditional and non-traditional news sources, it has become a global challenge to mark a distinction between real and fake news.

The phenomena have not spared Pakistan too.

The social media users came to know that English football club Fulham’s owner Shahid Khan has announced to donate $1bn for the Diamer Bhasha Dam fund. The widely shared/retweeted news later turned out to be a fake news. Nonetheless, the baseless, unverified news became a talk of the town.

A little verification was required to see that the Twitter account through which Khan confirmed the donation was made just a week ago.

Take another case, Finance Minister Asad Umar has repeatedly deburred the news that the federal government would demonetise Rs5,000 note.

But a fake image being circulated on the digital platforms with a catchy headline complimented with a news-style report is enough to cause an uncertainty among the people.

The recent victim of fake news phenomena became Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local bodies minister Shahram Tarkai as he shared a post highlighting Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah appealed to the overseas Pakistanis to deposit funds in ‘Partition fund’ – fifteen days after the partition.

The minister later apologized for his embarrassing retweet.

People came to know primarily through the activists and supporters of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf that the party chief and now prime minister, Imran Khan has decided to sell 150 kennel Bani Gala in view of donating the sum in Dam fund. 

The trend continues unabated.