Fake news and related activities have assumed threatening proportions and a mode of spreading rumours, damaging the reputation of a person or an entity, glorifying falsehood, maligning innocent and respectable persons in the society, spreading misinformation, circulating click-bait material, writing manufactured events and data , sensationalising things , spreading mistrust and hatred between groups of people, resorting to blackmailing and the like. Any news genuinely circulated, on the other hand, but going against a high profile “gentleperson” resorts to the mode of fake news portals to counter it by spreading all lies and canards to suppress the facts. Fake news through various modes and portals, WhatsApp, messaging and other social media forms and in numbers has become a menace and the “pilots” or the ”Admins” are projecting themselves as heroes thriving over fake news virtually having turned into an industry. Its wings need to be clipped sooner than any later. A Division Bench of the High Court has taken a serious view in respect of the mushrooming growth of such fake news portals on social media in Jammu and Kashmir as most of them are not following any procedure or an ethical code, least transparency and hence any credibility. In this connection, while hearing the PIL filed against the growing menace of multiple news agencies, WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube news channels etc it was told that these all must be under the supervision and the control of whatever authority since there being no proper regulatory mechanism presently in place. The Division Bench has asked the Government, the Information Department etc to consider the suggestions of the petitioner for implementation and “take appropriate action most expeditiously as permissible in law.”
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