Desk Report: A recent study reveals that Prothom Alo is the number one Bangladeshi newspaper when it comes to retracting news stories because they turned out to be fake. Daily Kalbela is second, and Daily Ittefaq ranks third.
These findings were presented yesterday, Saturday morning, at a seminar organized by the Press Institute Bangladesh (PIB).
The research, titled “Recent Trends of Misinformation in Bangladeshi Media,” was conducted by Mamun Or Rashid, a consultant for the Bangladesh Computer Council’s EBLICT project.
The study highlighted that after the student-people’s revolution on August 5th of last year, the spread of fake news in Bangladeshi media has increased significantly.
This trend is so widespread that even leading mainstream media outlets are publishing a lot of false information.
The research suggests that media organizations are focusing more on creating viral content rather than publishing true and unbiased news.
Such news is often spread intentionally by media outlets due to the commercial and financial value of viral content.
Other media outlets on the list for retracting fake news include Daily Jugantor, The Daily Star, Dhaka Post, Bangla Tribune, and bdnews24.com, among others.
Mamun Or Rashid stated that this is his own research, and these “sensational facts” emerged from his study conducted between January and June of this year.
He is currently updating the information for publication in a journal. The research used methods including six months of scraped data from fact-check sites and 694 distinct dead links from mainstream media.
Faiz Ahmad Tayyab, Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser, who was the chief guest at the seminar, expressed concern that the upcoming election could see the highest amount of false information spread in Bangladesh’s history.
He noted that this misinformation could come from political parties down to individual candidates.
Faiz Ahmad also commented that people tend to prefer fabricated and sensational information, which leads many media outlets to intentionally spread false news for financial gain.
He claimed that after August 5th, Awami League’s presence on social media has significantly increased, while the presence of opposition parties, including BNP, has nearly halved.
Tayyab warned that if mainstream media loses its credibility, content creators and bloggers will step in as alternative media sources. To counter this crisis, he advised media owners and management to invest in digital verification and fact-checking.