Doha: There is too much fake news spreading online that it has become difficult to make out what is true or fake for a casual reader.
A reader today forwarded news about “ban on Whatsapp calls” to us, which is spreading on social media, especially Whatsapp groups, with a link to The Peninsula website. Someone has put our links along with the fake news to make it look legitimate.
The forward we received said:
“Qatar going to ban whatsapp/IMO and orher social media calling fecility” Qatar going to ban whatsapp/IMO and orher social media calling fecility.
see the news below
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/26/02/2017/social media calls-in-Qatar-permit.”
We would like to clarify that we have not published any news like this and we are not aware of any such plans. Please disregard this if you receive the same in your whatsapp groups.
The broken link provided along the news doesn’t point to any story from our website; instead it takes to our home page. We are not sure about the intent behind the act.
There were cases reported earlier of miscreants using masked URLs with fake news (links which looked similar to reputed news services) and when you click them, it will go to some obscure website. This is largely used for click generation or to spread false propaganda.
These mal practices have caused lot of trust issues with users as people can’t make out the real from fake. Many are wary to click links on their mobile phones as they are not sure of the source.
This needs to change and needs to change soon. One small step is to check the news before you forward. Before you share, read it once and confirm the link is working. If it is from reputed news sources you can be sure about the authenticity.
During the demonetization move in India there were many such false news item spreading over social media. The one saying Indians can exchange currencies at the SBI and ICICI branches in Qatar went viral within hours. This when many news outlets had published that it can be done only in India and even we had published a clarification after many users started calling us.
Another recent incident was when there the tsunami rumour quoting some Japanese agency went Viral. Met came out with a clarification that this is not true.
This phenomenon has an opposite effect. When we published that the National Day activities are cancelled many readers didn’t share the news saying its fake news.
We always strive to make sure all the information we put are 100 percent genuine and in a rare instance if we err we always clarify it and do the remedial measures.
All our reports are passed through stringent fact checking and we source only from official and reliable sources. Moreover, we will not make two spelling mistakes in one headline.
And please make sure the link is not broken.
Do contact us on any of our social media platform, if you find any suspicious news from any source. We will definitely try to dig out the truth, if its available for publication.
