DailyPost 447
FAKE NEWS – DEMOCRATIC DAMAGE
Till the Barrack Obama Presidency, not very long, adverse media coverage, would take any political leader into a tailspin. Not any more. Trump has added a new jargon in the media lexicon, fake news. Any media company, with whatever credibility, can be brought to nought, once you declare it as as fake news company. Any attempts to defend adds to the ignominy, again as an attempt to propagate fake news. Whatever is officially stated by Trump, may be the final world, his constituency remains intact. The media has been hit by a missile more potent than the ones regularly tested by the rogue North Korea.
The scare has reached to such an extent that great media organisations like CNN, BBC & Time Magazine are facing the heat. They are going on in a huddle to defend themselves. They will remain in the market even in days to come, nonetheless, the seeds of suspicion have been properly sown. Every news item would be put through the lens of highest scrutiny, even post that, it can junked by a political leader as fake news. What state the fourth pillar of modern democracies have been brought to. The way the large majority of media has conducted itself in the last one or two decades, have brought them to this pass. Rupert Murdoch’s machinations are still fresh in the minds of the people, who follow the media.
With large part of the social media churning out fake news on a 24/7 basis & the mainstream media getting discredited by the day, the fate of information hangs in a balance in this highly celebrated Information Age. There is nothing which can be called fact, it seems. When media faces existential criss in matured democracies, the weaker democracies, dictatorial and other forms of governments have a field day. The dictators, the usurpers of powers, the warlords who never gave media any credibility, now have a logic to denigrate it. The spirit of Arab Springs seems to have long been dead. With media support being declared suspect, the future of democratic movements looks bleak.
FAKE NEWS CAN BE A BLOW TO THE STRENGTH OF STABLE DEMOCRACIES.
Sanjay Sahay