“Social media is a published media and all published material should agree with the law of the land,” said journalist Barkha Dutt here on Friday.
Participating in a session “Is the media leaning” along with ANI Editor-in Chief Smitha Prakash at the Mangaluru Lit Fest 2019, Ms. Dutt said that though she is trolled, she continues to use social media as a forum to engage with people and get feedback.
But, she said, there is also a lot of nonsense that goes on in the social media with personal comments, libel and slander. The Union government is now coming out with legislation on social media content and “I am in favour of it,” she said.
Ms. Prakash said that social media has helped in pointing biases of journalists and made the latter to correct it and be adaptive. While stating that there are positives, she said that there are negatives about social media too.
Ms. Prakash said that social media, unlike the traditional media, enjoys more freedom. “Freedom without responsibility, we need to take that with a pinch of salt. To believe everything put on the social media is not right,” she said and added that it will help people to make better judgment if they take a mix of what appears in the two mediums.
While Ms. Prakash said that polarisation of media was a concern, Ms. Dutt differed with the former and said that polarisation is good as it helps bring out the malign in the open.
The two journalists said that the English media did enjoy class elitism earlier and there is a healthy roll back now with the entry of people from small towns into the media arena.
