The Authenticity of News Channels in Pakistan
During the past few years, we have seen a hike in news channels in Pakistan. There are many new news channels we see on TV and so many small-scale channels on other online platforms like youtube and Facebook. Everyone just wants to tell the trending news in Pakistan what is new and what is happening around, without even verifying from a reliable source. They just grab the attention of the viewer with manipulative taglines, and when you listen to the news there is nothing in there like mentioned in the headline.
The culture of breaking news in Pakistan
For the past few years, Pakistani news channels have established this culture of” breaking news”. Every channel just wants to break the news and wants to be the first one breaking the news. Even if it costs them their authenticity, the only thing they care about is the ratings. Creating a panic in public and making a big fuss about it. Sometimes, the event doesn’t even happen and they break it on the channel just to grab the audience’s attention.
The game of ratings
We all understand that this is all about the ratings of the channels now. But why is this so important for them? The answer is the more the ratings the more the number of audiences, and the more the number of audiences they get more screen time for the commercials and ads. The channel with top ratings charges the most for commercials. In short, the higher the ratings the higher the profit the channel makes. And nothing is more important than the business, not even the authentic news.
The effects of Fake News
In order to break the most trending news in Pakistan, many channels deliver fake news. This happens mostly in the web channels when they misinterpret news and spread it everywhere. Let’s take a look back at when Covid started spreading. Everyone had an opinion regarding this virus. Some people said this is nothing but a hoax, some people said that it will be gone by summer. Many news channels invited doctors and experts to get their opinion on the pandemic. But many of them had no idea what they were talking about.
We saw people giving many home remedies on the web channels to cure the virus, and thousands of people shared those videos. And we also witnessed many people falling for those remedies and ending up in hospital for having diarrhea and other health issues. This craze of breaking news in Pakistan is the main reason for the spread of fake news. The fake news itself is a virus and can affect people in many ways. It can hurt people’s dignity, it can ruin someone’s reputation and career or it can spread misinformation among people which can lead to severe consequences.
The biases of news channels
We see that there is a kind of grouping in different news channels, one channel covers a story from a different perspective and another channel airs it in a totally different way. It happens mostly in the political news, one channel appreciates the initiative taken by the government and other channels criticize it. No one tells the actual pros and cons of the project to the public. Moreover, they share the half story without verifying the whole story. This biasness creates confusion among people and it affects their decision-making power. Media houses really have to evaluate themselves while breaking any news and people should be aware of what to believe and what not.
What can we do?
In this era of fake news, how can we prevent ourselves from such misinformation, we cannot believe everything we see on news channels. But how can we identify what is real under the label of breaking news or trending news in Pakistan? For this purpose it is our responsibility to do the research, just make your searching game strong. Everything is available on the internet. We can get the right information with just a click.
Be it the statistics they show on channels and any kind of rankings, just go to any search engine and you will find the authentic sources and the reports on those matters. Always go for those sources which are reliable and share the right thing with people. If you are not sure about any news, you just know the tagline, not the whole story, just do not share it without knowing the whole story. This kind of breaking news in Pakistan can break people’s trust over the news channels.
