Growing challenges of Media Freedom

Pakistan Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) law that the government seeks to impose on Pakistanis to shield its officials and organisations from criticism because fake news is obscuring the differentiation among genuine and misleading data, and is frequently spread via web-based media. Freedom of expression and the right to information can be suppressed by this Act. Journalists and analysts are concerned that the act would be used to target anyone who disagree with government policy. Whenever a Pakistani journalist or activist speaks out on a critical issue, they mysteriously disappeared.

Media practitioners and governments can only build mechanisms to combat false news by debate and deliberation, not by enacting legislation. Nobody can choke media in 2022. This act being methodicallly slaughtered in this nation by minimize flexibility of expression on the affection of combating ‘fake news,’ cybercrime and misinformation. The Pakistani government is looking for wide modern powers to control the media as portion of its crackdown on flexibility of expression.

Government should elaborate the definition of fake news in Act evidently to avoid perplexity. Authority can also minimize misinformation by maximize monitoring and removing toxic content without finishings data secrecy.

The media require gatekeeping of the exactness of the news. No news is fake news. Media can improve society by taking some positive steps including misinformation awareness campaigns, focus on social issues, and provide accurate information about economic, political, social and sports so that people should not be misused. People are impulsively believe fake news on social media and spread fake news without cross check. The absence of an exact definition of fake news will also leave citizens vulnerable to the interpretations. People should cross check news before sharing and look over the sources from where that content picked up.