DailyPost 2773
COMPREHENSIVE FACT CHECK
As strange as it may sound as things stand today, comprehensive fact checks, officially done, or any agency of competence or research organisations having the skills, tools and the domain knowledge can be the only saviours of democracy. We have already descended into a post fact, post truth, post data and post propriety age. Our fast descent into the vortex of imagination, premeditated and focused, and at times out of being ignorant and casual can jolly well take us to the point of no return. Objectivity, empiricism, contextual relevance and finance proofing is the need of the hour, for every uttering in the public domain to the biggest of the projects.
Digital fact checking can only take us to one level, though it is being treated as a panacea to all issues of falsehood and misinformation that has gripped our political system completely and to a great extent governance. Digital / cyber fact check can give you whether the video has been doctored or not, facts taken out of context or otherwise, some stated fact being blatantly false/imaginary, use of false digital artifacts, photoshopped and now deepfake. Fake videos the AI way. Voice being manipulated for ulterior motives. What do we achieve out of this?
It gives an authentication of both the facts and medium and goes a long way in creating a saner environment. What if the facts /promises being disseminated are not true? There might be clear cut legal handicaps and it can never happen, but gets sold like hot cakes. Take for example under what law money can be seized in a case or more comically in all black money cases combined, and be redistributed to the people at large. It has both a positive and a negative angle. One promises to do it and benefit the targeted group and the other creating fear that this could be done by the other party to the disadvantage of certain individuals or communities.
Legal fact checks of actions promised is a necessity, otherwise the country will keep taking circles for all times to come. The country will work as per its laws, processes and precedents. What cannot be legally done, needs to be called out in the public domain and settled once and for all. Need for anything, for whom and for how long needs to be necessarily spelt out. The fact check from the finance side needs to be razor sharp. All promises, claims, plans and projects need to be fact checked from this angle. It should also be mapped against anything done earlier, its success and impact thereof. Financial burden of any action, its cost benefit analysis, liability and impact need to be fully sorted out before even uttering a word on it. The world of freebies generally opens a financial can of worms. Audit remarks keep hanging and yet similar promises make headway.
DEMOCRACY CANNOT BECOME ROBUST WITH COMPREHENSIVE FACT CHECK. THIS IS ITS DUE DILIGENCE.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.