LAHORE: Panellists dissected the new media and digital sources of information in the era of post-truth and the ways to deal with it in a session on the concluding day of the Afkar-e-Taza ThinkFest at Alhamra on Sunday. The session, titled “New Media: Democratization vs Disinformation,” was moderated by Raza Rumi.

Journalist Benazir Shah lamented the state of social media, which is flooded with disinformation.

“A joint investigation team was probing the attack on Imran Khan. There were stories about the three attackers involved in the case. We contacted all the members of the JIT, and they denied the reports, saying there was only one attacker according to their probe.”

Pointing out the trends, she said journalists were targeted on social media, and that’s very dangerous. “There are hashtags against journalists, and they also damage the credibility of journalists. There is another huge concern for the journalists across the world that is how you get the people to trust you again.”

Syed Muzammil Shah pointed out overproduction on social media. “There is the dissemination of information at the mass level, and it has been happening since the times of the Romans. Marcus Aurelius also faced the issue of fake news and how to handle it.”

He said people with certain psychological traits were prone to buying such information, and they could not be saved from it as they wouldn’t appreciate the truth. “We are living in the state of utopias and ideal utopias.” He said celebrities-turned-politicians were on the rise in the world because of social media. For example, he said, Donald Trump was an entertainer due to the WWE and beauty pageants he organised and became the president (of the USA), and in ourcountry, an entertainer became the prime minister.

“Nawaz Sharif, Zardari Sahib and any other person don’t have the personality to make the women start biting their nails. It’s very serious because, in the future, any TikToker can become a PM.

“We think that the truth can replace that, but nobody cares for truth. In the post-truth society, truth becomes irrelevant. Truth doesn’t kill disinformation or misinformation,” Mr Shah said while painting a dark picture of the state of affairs by saying that the state of Pakistan always promoted disinformation as “the whole Pak Studies book is fake news.”

Mehmal Sarfraz, the co-founder of current.pk, says in the print media, there is at least a denial or correction of any wrong news, but on TV channels, there are very few channels that do corrections.

“In digital media, there is a lot of disinformation, and fact-checking is a must there. It can turn dangerous and lead to lynching. In Pakistan, there is no fact-checking in real time, which leads to disinformation. Digital is very different from mainstream media,” she said.

Asad Baig of Media Matters highlighted the campaigns against journalists, saying 91pc of women journalists can’t post their work online because they face direct harassment. In such a situation, there can’t be quality journalism.

As a solution to the issues mentioned above regarding media and social media, Ms Shah stressed the need for more media literacy. “We need to have people to differentiate between journalists, reporters and opinion makers. The people don’t know the difference between them. Like opinions are always biased but my reports won’t be biased that would tell you each side of the story.”

Muzammil Shah suggested that to spread the truth on social media, we would have to manipulate and use propaganda. “There is a culture of trends; whichever tweet would be in trend would be at the top, and we would keep harping on the truth while nobody would care about it. We have to overproduce our version of the truth. Only then will the truth triumph.”

Mehmal said there were laws like Peca (Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act) that were being used to control social media but not to reform it. She called for better defamation laws, especially for digital media.

On how to counter fake news and disinformation, Mr Baig stressed the need for critical thinking that could not be done without policy intervention. “Big tech failed women in this region because it doesn’t take any responsibility. He called for the implementation of defamation laws and regulatory bodies because the prevalent laws are not being properly used.

NEHRU AND MODI: Adeel Hussain of New York University and co-author of “Nehru: The Debates that Defined India, said that though Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Nehru disagreed on politics, some specific personal elements held both men together. Jinnah approaches the conversation with Jawaharlal Nehru with a resentment that he had against him for his meteoric rise in the All India Congress. In the early part of the 20th century, Jinnah looked like the heir to the leadership of the All India National Congress but with the emergence of Gandhi on the scene, he withdrew because a new type of communal politics started in the party.

Talking about the politics of Nehru, he said Indian Muslims wanted their rights protected in the Indian constitution. However, the secular India project fell apart in postcolonial India at the constituent assembly as the seats of the Muslim League remained empty because Muslims were not willing to participate in it which was a blunder. Later on, India entered the princely states like Kashmir and Hyderabad with the latter facing police action which was, in fact, military action as Nehru took over that state. Conservative estimates in the Sunder Lal stated that 20,000 to 30,000 people died in the action, other estimates took the number to 200,000.

Adeel Hussain said Sardar Patel, who was the only one in the Congress who could see Nehru in the eye, wanted to resolve the Hyderabad issue differently but Nehru’s socialism and internationalism failed.

When the Indian Constitution was introduced, it emphasized the freedom of expression and speech and Nehru curtailed it after a series of attacks in the press on his politics. He introduced the first amendment that curtailed the freedom of the press especially regarding reporting on him.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2023