Hyderabad: Disseminate uncontaminated information, journalists exhorted

Hyderabad: David Moyer, Public Affairs Officer at the US Consulate General Hyderabad has called upon journalists to strive to disseminate uncontaminated information because the responsible citizenry forms opinions based on the information supplied by the media.

Delivering the keynote address at a National Conference on Countering Disinformation, jointly organised by the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Osmania University and the US Consulate General Hyderabad on the OU campus on Saturday, Moyer said: "Misinformation poses the greatest threat to democracies. Journalists help responsible citizens to form an opinion on contemporary issues," he maintained.

"Unfortunately, sometimes the disinformation comes from legitimate media outlets. Not out of malice, but because we are swimming in a sea of information – some of which is true and some of which is false," he observed. He said that it is not always easy to tell the difference between a lie and a fact.

"But it's important that we all work hard to see that difference and articulate it. This is particularly true for journalists, as the public relies on you to understand what's going on in the world," Moyer observed.

He appreciated the OU for coming forward to help Telugu television journalists of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to acquire skills to counter disinformation.

Professor Lakshminarayana, Registrar, OU, underlined the need of countering disinformation and misinformation for the common good. Both the guests released a book on fact checking authored by a noted journalist Udumula Sudhakar Reddy and a fact checker Satyapriya. Prof K Narender, Dean, Social Sciences, Prof. K Stevenson, HoD, Journalism and Mass Communication, also spoke.

Syed Nazakat, founder and CEO, DataLeads, urged participants to apply critical thinking techniques to sift facts from the flood of information. In her session, Nivedita Niranjankumar, News Editor (South), BoomLive, emphasised observational skills over overdependence on tech tools. She asked the trainees to think about what is fake news, opinion, and joke.

"With regard to a claim, look whether it's false, or missing context, or is a satire. It is wrong to think fact check is needed only when something is viral. Relevance makes every bit of information important to fact check," she said.

Fact check trainers Udumula Sudhakar Reddy, Coreena Suares, Naresh Nandam, BN Satyapriya, project member S Ramu and Abdul Basit from the US Consulate were also present.