GAYA(Bihar): Over the past few years, online technology has evolved at a rapid rate, but at the same time misleading information and content is shared through Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other online mediums. While sharing misleading information or 'fake news' leads to tampering of facts, many times various challenges arise in front of the administration in maintaining law and order.
The media can play an important role in controlling the misleading news, hence Google, the world's largest search engine, has expressed concern over the spread of fake news and come up with the idea of organizing the workshops to make the public aware about the fake news. Under this Google initiative, a workshop on Fake News was organized at the Media department of Central University of South Bihar (CUSB) under the joint aegis of Google News Initiative India and DataLeads.
CUSB Public Relation Officer (PRO)-cum-Program Coordinator Md. Mudassir Alam said that the workshop was specially organized for the correspondents of Gaya district and neighbouring areas. The authentic Google Trainer of the workshop was Dr. Ravi Suryavanshi (Assistant Professor, Media Dept., CUSB), in addition, Dean and Head of the Department, Prof. Atish Prashar and PRO Md. Mudassir Alam also shared their views. Dr. Ravi Suryavanshi said that the main objective of this workshop was to make media persons aware of fake news.
Program Coordinator Mr. Mudassir Alam first thanked the participating media persons for their presence in the workshop and welcomed everyone by giving them media kits. The program further progress with the welcome address delivered by Prof. Atish Prashar, Head. Media Department. Prof. Prashar said that prevention of fake news is not only necessary but it is also necessary to preserve the credibility of the journalism sector.
Dr. Ravi Suryavanshi gave training to the media persons regarding identification and prevention of fake news. He made the participants aware about various tools like Google Reverse Image, In-Vid and Yandex. He said that with the help of all these tools, a journalist can very easily identify fake news through his mobile phone or computer during his reporting. At the end, PRO Md. Mudassir Alam thanked all the journalists and said that fake news has emerged as a big problem for journalists and this sector. It is very important to do its prevention properly and quickly.
Giving vote of thanks, Dr. Ravi Suryavanshi said that in the coming time various workshops related to verification of fake news will be organized by Google News Initiative India and DataLeads in the universities, media offices and press clubs of different districts of Bihar in future. The main goal of this campaign of Google is to create awareness and understanding about Fake News among local media persons, media educators and media students.