Real News vs Fake News: A Challenge for Pragmatic Media Ethics

Abstract

Collecting authentic information has been a tough task for journalists since the start of their career lives. Either they confirm the news from their source or through the internet but lately due to the unrestrained flow of information on the internet, it’s hard to check the authenticity of the news. We can also not deny that the dissemination of fake news is either for sensationalism or to create chaos among the masses. Different regulatory authorities are operating to keep a check and balance on different mediums, but social media has not been controlled yet by any authority which the aim of this research is to evaluate the clarity between fake news and real news under the perspective of media ethics. The main objective of this study is to analyze the consequences of fake and real news and its drawbacks and authenticity among the public. Media Information Literacy theory has been applied as theoretical support for this study. The researchers used the purposive sampling technique for the collection of data from Pakistani journalists to make the research more evident and argumentative. The hypothesis of this study has been testified thus this research proved that the quantity of fake news is gradually increasing in the media, especially on social media platforms.

Keywords: Real News, Responsible Journalism, social media, Fake News, Media Ethics