Representational Photo: Collected-
Metropolis Report-
A report released on Tuesday states that a study of 33 news websites in Bangladesh’s media revealed that all of them had a medium to high risk of misleading their online audience.
A lack of transparent checks and balances and the absence of accuracy policies put at least 16 of them at a high risk of disseminating false information.
The study was carried out between July and December 2022 by Digitally Right in collaboration with the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and is the basis for the paper “Disinformation Risk Assessment: The Online News Market in Bangladesh.”
The study examined 700 stories from the major media using the operational and content pillars as its framework. Nine variables, including news bias, headline accuracy, sensationalism, attribution, etc., were used by the content pillar to evaluate the domains. With an average score of 86 out of 100 on these indicators, all 33 sites did well.
The six operational pillar indicators, such as ownership information, editorial guidelines, post-publication correction policy, fact-checking policy, etc., however, showed inadequate performance by the domains. The average result was 29.
During the webinar presentation of the findings, Shafiqul Alam, bureau chief at AFP in Dhaka, Ayesha Kabir, head of English at Prothom Alo, Talat Mamun, executive director at Channel 24, and Saiful Alam Chowdhury, associate professor at Dhaka University, expressed their perspectives. The event was moderated by Miraj Ahmed Chowdhury, the founder of Digitally Right.
