Bangladeshi media’s troubling tango with fake news

Oftentimes, we hear politicians, academics and journalists laying great emphasis on how the mainstream media can play its part to fight the menace of fake news and misinformation. In such a discussion last year, speakers said the role of the media was "more important than ever amid a growing surge of false information intended to mislead the public."

But sadly, in Bangladesh, we have been witnessing a disappointing phenomenon where some mainstream media outlets have been amplifying misinformation, instead of combating it. It may sound unpleasant to many, but the reality is that a section of the media has been contributing to the proliferation of misinformation online.

On February 3, 2022, international news agency AFP's fact-checking unit rated a news story published by a reputed Bangladeshi TV station, which recently reached the landmark of 10 million subscribers on its YouTube channel, as "false information." Crediting the state-owned Saudi Press Agency (SPA), the story claimed that the Saudi government had approved a draft amendment to redesign its national flag to remove Kalima Tayyiba (Islamic declaration of faith) from it. Currently, the green flag of Saudi Arabia is emblazoned with Kalima Tayyiba above a sword.

However, in reality, neither the SPA nor any other Saudi news media said anything like this in their reports about the approval of the draft amendment, which actually was revised to propose new regulations regarding the use of the flag. Rather, some Saudi newspapers categorically mentioned in their reports that the revised draft did not propose any changes to the contents of the flag.

Interestingly, not only that leading TV channel, but several other top media outlets in Bangladesh—newspapers and online portals—published this fake news, leading to a flood of reproduction on social media platforms.

This incident is no anomaly, as outright false information, photos and video footage are frequently being carried by top Bangladeshi media outlets.

The ongoing Ukraine crisis can be another case in point to illustrate how heedless our gatekeepers are in the newsrooms in ensuring the accuracy of what they publish, especially on a sensitive issue like war. Fact-checkers identified more than one TV channel in Bangladesh that aired footage from video games as real-life scenes of the Russia-Ukraine war. Some broadcasters used in their reports old and unrelated clips and photos with false or misleading descriptions to stoke emotion among their viewers. Unsubstantiated claims picked up from social media platforms found places in news reports as "information."

Numerous news items published by the Bangladeshi mainstream media outlets have been rated as false or misleading by national and international fact-checking organisations in recent years. In a report in January 2021, Boom Bangladesh, a third-party fact-checking partner of Facebook focused on Bangladesh, said they had detected 23 pieces of fake news in mainstream media outlets between March and December in 2020. Arguably the most popular TV channel in the country was caught 10 times in that 10-month period broadcasting fake news. Many other TV stations, newspapers and online-only portals were also identified as fake news proliferators during the same period. Those fake news items were mostly centred around health, politics and religious sentiments. The year 2021 saw a similar trend when Boom Bangladesh encountered 11 fake news stories in the media. Other fact-checking organisations also detected misleading news stories in Bangladeshi media in the same year.

As a fact-checker who has been working with different organisations for around five years, I have to struggle to name five news outlets in the country that have not been rated at least once as spreaders of fake news. While the media in Bangladesh, which has ranked low in the Press Freedom Index for years, has contributed immensely to the development of the country, despite all odds, the problem of fake news that it currently faces can diminish its credibility among the public.

Sometimes, some fake news or out-of-context information does not seem harmful to anyone. But we know as a matter of fact that this menace can turn deadly at any time. Bangladesh has seen, in recent past, murders of innocent people due to rumours spread on Facebook. Widespread violence against religious minorities was sparked by online misinformation on many occasions. When the problem is this big, the media has a crucial role to work out how to deal with the threat. And the first thing to do is ensure that it has not become a vehicle of fake news.

Analysing the types of fake news that have been carried by our mainstream media, we can identify two major factors that have contributed to the problem: One is a lack of proper understanding about scientific topics, including health-related issues, that journalists were reporting on, and the other is mistranslation from English.

Exhaustive information ecosystem, especially the volumes of user generated content (UGC), makes anyone vulnerable to fake news. But for a journalist, verifying a piece of information found online is no tough job at all. What they need is the desire to be fool-proof when it comes to the accuracy of information. Oftentimes, some simple searches on Google about the origin of the content or basic image and video verification techniques can save a newsperson from falling into the trap of fabricated information. Present-day journalists, especially those who deal with the UGC, have to have a standard level of knowledge of how to verify a piece of information using modern technologies.

While social media platforms are increasingly becoming sources of revenue for the media in developing countries, tech companies like Facebook and Twitter have turned against the publishers of fake news, penalising them in the strictest ways possible. Under the third-party fact-checking programme of Facebook, pages of several Bangladeshi media outlets faced temporary restrictions in terms of reach and revenue, and the programme is only expanding. So, the newsroom bosses in Bangladesh have to be more watchful about what is being published and broadcast in their outlets.

Qadaruddin Shishir is a fact-checker based in Dhaka.