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| Your favourite news portal might churn out Fake News Photo: Internet Search |
In the last couple of years we have seen an
exponential rise in usage of the term, “Fake News”. The term got traction,
shortly before the US elections and has been used widely ever since. The term
was coined in response to so called news reports, claiming actions and events,
which never happened. But is that all Fake News is about? If a news report
claims that the sun has risen in the west today, it will obviously be a fake
news. But what about news reports, which uses data, first person accounts, field
visits and other credible means to publish a report, yet it doesn’t give you
the true picture? Can this “fact based” news still be called Fake News?
Indian Affair came across this news
report from New18. Filed by Adrija
Bose, the news talks about a very sensitive topic, that of human trafficking.
Now before I talk more about the news report, it is worthwhile to know that
almost all headlines for a news report are written by a special desk and not by
the reporter filing the story. The idea is to write a catchy headline, which
will get more clicks. This is known as “click bait”.
The headline reads, “It's So Common For
Haryana's Men to Buy and Sell Wives That No One Cares anymore”. Now a headline
like this should send shivers down our spines. Because buying and selling wives
has become common in Haryana. When one uses the word, “common”, for an
activity, it implies that a vast majority of people practice that. One can say,
“smoking is common among men in India”. Common things can be observed by everyone.
They don’t need an “investigative reporter” to go out and collect data. The
headline will make us believe that a vast majority of the 25.3
million people in Haryana practice wife buying and selling.
But wait, isn’t buying and selling wives
illegal, let alone inhuman? Why isn’t anyone talking about it? What are the
opposition parties doing in Haryana? If a vast majority is involved in buying
and selling of wives, there would have been a national outrage. Victims would
have come forward and their buyers/sellers would have been hounded by the
media. Clearly the claim by New18 is a case of exaggeration, bordering on Fake
News.
The news also claims that the state has a sex
ratio of 834, i.e. 834 women for every 1,000 men. I have no idea where this
number is coming from. The census of 2011 counted 877
women per 1,000 men, a significant increase from 2001 census, of 861. So in
the very beginning of the “news report”, two major lies have been used. Dispensing
wrong or misleading information is also Fake News.
After a sweeping generalisation in the
headline, the “news report”, for no apparent reason, shifts its focus to Mewat.
The district of Mewat in Haryana is the most
backward district of India. With a decadal
population growth of 38% (state average of 20%), it has the highest population
growth rates in the state, except for Gurgaon due to migration. This is
primarily to a significantly
high fertility rate in the district. Against the state average of 2.7,
Mewat has a fertility rate of 5. Surprisingly the claim of an abysmal sex ratio
as the reason for the “common practice of wife buying and selling”, also turns
out to be suspicious. The district of Mewat has a sex ratio of 906 (against the
state average of 877), the highest in the state. The district also has the
lowest literacy rates in Haryana. Only 73% men in the district are literate
against the state average of 85% and an abysmally low 38% women are literate,
against the state average of 67%.
Adrija Bose, managed to talk to four trafficked
women in the district, all married/sold to Muslim families. This is not
surprising given that Mewat’s 79% population is
Muslim. It is only natural that statistically they will be higher in any
parameter. Surprisingly, in the “news report”, Adrija does not provide us the
numbers for trafficked women even for a single village. While she claims that
the practice is “common” yet she could only come up with just four women in the
entire district. One can understand that it is difficult to find out trafficked
victims, let alone talk to them. But when something is “common”, it should have
been possible for Adrija to talk to more than four women in a district with
over 1 million people.
Later on in the “news report”, Adrija
encounters a shocking truth. She says, “The shocking part is that everyone here
is aware that 'Paros' [a term used for trafficked women] are bought from
different parts of the country because of the lack of women in their state, that they are often shared among the
brothers in a family, and that they are sold to other villagers. But no one
bats an eyelid.” She goes on to extrapolate her personal opinion, as a
problem of the entire state. She clearly failed her statistics exam, if she
ever took one.
Finally Adrija quotes, Ghausia Khan, a local
activist, where she reveals the source of the problem. “The 59-year-old
activist may be the only light in all of Mewat district, but she has not been
able to stop the practice. "I have tried, but I can't do this alone. Men
who are old, alcoholic, violent, or widowed don't find wives in Haryana. So
they go to other states to find wives," she said.” So the so called
“common” practice of buying and selling wives is restricted to a particular
category of men in Mewat. Apparently it is not even “common” in Mewat, let
alone Haryana.
The problem of trafficked women being sold to
men in Mewat and their subsequent commoditisation, seems to be a local problem.
This is an alarming situation. While Muslim women in rest of the country are fighting
against Triple Talaq and Nikah Halala, the trafficked women in Mewat are not
even given their basic right to a legal marriage. It will be futile to engage
with the local Maulvis to solve this problem. They, in all probability are
indifferent to the crime. There is a need for more women like Ghausia Khan, who
will fight the battle for their fellow Muslim women.
The problem with ill researched reports is that
they appear to be true when someone reads them. The reader will only get to see
the truth once they start doing their own research. In this particular “news
report” Adrija would have spoken to people in the Mewat region, but she
extrapolates her “findings” to the entire state and to all of North India. She
then absurdly goes on to claim that, “Though the practice of buying wives is
common in the northern part of India, it's especially popular in Haryana.”
One wonders, what her yardstick to measure what common or popular is? Such
sweeping statements not only diminish the credibility of news and the
journalist, it also trivialises a very sensitive issue.
Haryana
has become some kind of a punching bag for reporters who want to cover “patriarchy”
and other social issues. There are many problems in Haryana, including
patriarchy and others. But these problems exist in almost all states, in
varying degrees. But Haryana is almost on the top when it comes to “news
reports” on such subjects. It is probably due to the fact that a journalist can
simply ask their office driver to take them to the nearest patriarchy infested
village. And being surrounded on three sides by Haryana, the probability and
convenience of landing up in a Haryana village is extremely high. As a famous
journalist once sighted the “tyranny of distance” as an excuse to not cover the
Assam riots, it is the ease of access for the likes of Adrija Bose. One can do
a day trip to a Haryana village and file an extrapolated report the next day.
It is that easy.
