The Menace Of Fake, Fabricated & Orchestrated News Is Harming Our Society: Allahabad High Court

The Allahabad High Court on Monday observed that the menace of fake, fabricated, and orchestrated news is causing harm to society.

The Bench of Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Abdul Moin observed this while hearing a plea seeking an appropriate direction to the State authorities for framing guidelines to regulate various news media so that the tendency to spread fake, fabricated, and orchestrated news, may be curbed.

However, the Court noted that prayers primarily lie in the realm of policy and are not the preserve of the Court, and therefore, the Court dismissed the plea.

"What we find is that the prayers made in this petition primarily lie in the realm of policy and the petitioner has thus sought a direction to the State to frame/come out with a policy to check such disturbing trend in media," the Court noted.

The Court was also informed that the Apex Court is already seized of such matter in Writ Petition (Civil) No.787 of 2020; Jamiat Ulama I Hind & another vs. Union of India and another. 

However, before the Court dismissed the plea, the Court did observe thus:

"While we do not intend in any manner to minimize the need of curbing such menace which is causing more harm to society, we are also conscious of the fact that the matter exclusively lies in the policymaking arena, which in our considered opinion is not the preserve of the Court."

Importantly, while hearing a batch of writ petitions seeking action against the media for communalization of the Tablighi Jamaat meeting in Delhi Nizamuddin Markaz, the Chief Justice of India NV Ramana last week expressed concerns about the attempts in social media and online portals to give communal colour to news.

The CJI lamented that the web portals are not governed by anything and social media companies listen only to powerful people and not to institutions or common people.

"Twitter, Facebook or YouTube...they never respond to us and there is no accountability. About the institutions they have written badly and they don't respond and say this is their right. They only worry about powerful men and not judges, institutions or common man. That is what we have seen," said CJI.

Case title - Vishnu Kumar Srivastava (Petitioner In person) v. State Of U.P.Thru Addl.Chief Secy. Information Lko & Ors

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