In Kashmir, facts are never facts when it comes to a sensational News item. None among us even bothers to wait for an authentic source to confirm the news.
The only thing that matters to us is that the News is supposed to be viral, people are supposed to pass on their judgements, Facebook journalists are supposed to come live on their pages and myriad of Facebook pages are supposed to upload this unverified content with a caption “Khudaya Raham” to attract more viewers, the report further added.
The report further mentions that that This is what happens when there are no checks and balances in the system, when there is no trustworthy source (barring a few news agencies) to verify the genuineness of the news that people go scot-free and post everything that comes their way without even bothering about the repercussions of it.
Yesterday evening, a two liner, “Budgam youth arrested, while digging a tunnel to his Girlfriend’s house” set the K – internet on fire. The news spread like the European wild fire with valley’s more than 15 News Portals publishing the same news on their websites.
People were up in arms, meme makers got their fodder, so called content creators got their 3 minutes to earn more money and the pious ones were once again seen bewildered with what is actually happening.
The team at online portal The Kashmir Radar, tried to dig deeper to reach to the source of the news which urgently needed confirmation, but after a three hour long research, all they could find were certain comments by the users, calling it a fake News.
Finally after painstaking efforts they found a Twitter user @Tabish_Malik who had actually played a prank on his friend by uploading a status in Urdu language which translates into English as, “A youth namely Asif from Kashmir’s Budgam district caught red-handed by locals while digging a tunnel to his lover’s house.”
When this goof by Tabish went viral on social media with people sharing it as a reality, Tabish again took to social media and clarified that it was just a meme and wrote, “I roasted one of my friends on fb with this meme. It went viral from North to South within hours on every social media site. May Allah be pleased with all of you, he is my heart, he is my friend.”
Unfortunately, this post by Tabish wasn’t shared by many and most of the users are still of the opinion that a tunnel was truly dug by a lover in Budgam.
Stay away from fake news, before sharing anything on social media, try verifying the authenticity the source.
