Ashis Sinha I Bokaro: Media must remain honest and truthful; act with great restraint and responsibility, said Kumud Kumar Thakur General Manager Bokaro Steel Plant and President of Mithila Sanskriti Parishad.
Speaking at the seminar titled – ‘Role of Media in Current Perspective of the Country’ Thakur said that a free and fair media was not just a part of a healthy democracy but was an indispensable prerequisite.
“Media has been considered the fourth pillar of the democratic system- a pillar that supports, nurtures and nourishes the democracy and helps in course corrections as and when necessary,” he added.
The seminar was organised by Mithila Sanskriti Parishad – a social and cultural institution Mithila Sanskrit Parishad at Sector 4 in Bokaro Steel City on Sunday.
Expressing his views Ajay Ask a senior journalist said, now-a-day social media has given us access to more information sources than ever, but its changing our perceptions of each other and crushing the quality journalism.
“The social media also possess a serious threat to the national security of a nation,” he added.
The relationship between fake news and social media is emerging as one of the fresh challenges not only for the national security but also destroying the credibility of Print and Electronic Media, said Ajay.
“Easy access to digital tools, mushrooming of social media platforms, easy availability of smartphones with affordable Internet access have bolstered the nexus of fake news with social media, said Akshay Kumar.
“While fake news is content in the form of news items, videos, photos (morphed photos), generated in the appearance of real news with a bad or wrong intent to mislead the reader-social media platforms, which are predominantly user-generated content on various digital communications channels, act as a powerful and swift vehicle to circulate the fake news,” added Akshay.
The users of social media are frequently exposed to a plethora of fake news items, which they often believe as real news and share it on their social media platforms, he said.
Unlike traditional media (print and electronics media), which have to keep a close watch on content, social media platforms enjoy a considerable amount of freedom in terms of filtration of the content.
With less checking points, the menace of fake news gets circulated by unaware readers to their social media groups, which in turn gets viral in the digital sphere of social media, thus, creating a vicious circle of promoting false information, manipulative information and hoodwinking the consumers of that information, said Akshay.
Speaking on the occasions Arvind Sharma urged, media must place the welfare of the common man and the progress of the nation at the centre of all its activities.
“Media must act as the moral compass and the conscience of the society and must aggressively campaign to end all social evils. It must become the voice of the voiceless and help the helpless,” said Vijay Jha.
Arun Pathak asked the media to shun the tendency to sensationalize and present facts dispassionately without mixing news and views.
In this sequence, 35 journalists were honoured with Vidyapati Samman, for their outstanding contribution in the field of journalism; presented mementoes and stole.
Beside others, SK Jha, Amarendra Jha, Amita Jha, Tulanand Mishra, KC Jha, Rambabu Chaudhary, Manoj Jha, Jayanti Pathak, Usha Jha, Nutan Jha, PK Jha, Gangesh Pathak, Sudeep Thakur, Ganesh Jha, Aman Kumar Jha , Shravan Kumar Jha, Rajiv Kanth, Mayanand Jha, Sunil Mohan Thakur, Deepak Kumar, Vishwanath Goswami, Dheeraj Tiwari, Vivekananda Jha were present on the occasion.
