Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

We are living in a world, where information is at our fingertips. Whether we watch the TV, listen to the Radio, browse through the Internet, juggle with our mobile phones, we have access to the latest events around the world.

But how many of us realize that all these news are correct, since we are neither eyewitness to the happenings unfolding in our city, our country, our region, and out world, nor do we have any reliable person at the hotspots to relate to us the realities.

We depend upon news agencies and the various broadcasters, without realizing that we are allowing our minds and thoughts to be controlled by the information they provide.

In order words, to be fair and frank, we are not sure whether these news have been twisted, distorted, and blown out of proportion in the form of sensational stories, by these commercial information outlets, or have been manipulated by the politicians who call the shots.

There might also be news – real genuine and factual information – that have been totally ignored by these channels in order to keep us in the dark.

This is where the term "fake news” which of late is being bandied about by the quixotic US President Donald Trump – himself a habitual liar – for information he doesn’t like or deems unfavourable, has been hitting the headlines, although it is also an analytical term that describes deliberate disinformation presented in the form of a conventional news report.

Way back in 1925, Harper’s Magazine in the US published an article about the dangers of "fake news.”

But today, the various US news agencies and the printed media, especially those controlled by the Zionists, are the biggest producers of fake news.

Whether amateur, criminal or governmental, many organizations in the US, Europe, Russia, China, and of course the so-called Third World countries, are skilled at giving a spin to the information they provide.

The supposedly free services offered by social media are based on a profit model in which users’ information and attention is molded and controlled by feeding of constant disinformation.

According to analysts, emotions such as outrage stimulate engagement, and news that is outrageous but false news has been shown to engage more viewers than accurate news. One study found that such falsehoods on Twitter were 70% more likely to be retweeted than accurate news.

Fact-checking by conventional news media is often unable to keep up, and sometimes can even be counterproductive by drawing more attention to the falsehood.

False information on Twitter is retweeted by many more people and far more rapidly than true information, and repeating it, even in a fact-checking context, may increase a person’s likelihood of accepting it as true.

That is the reason Twitter and Facebook blocks has recently deleted the genuine accounts of many Iranians as well as conscientious people around the world, who by exposing the false news and providing factual news, were acting as bulwarks against fake news.

It is an undeniable fact that the social-media profit model can be weaponized by states and non-state actors, as is done both by the US and its client regimes and also by the terrorist outfits.

For instance, the despicable takfiri terrorists, with the covert financial and technological aid provided to them by the imperialists, the Zionists and the Arab reactionary regimes, have factories of fake news that deceive unsuspecting Muslim youngsters.

The US manipulates the social media, through its agents around the world to mislead people by dishing out poisonous propaganda against independent countries, whose system of government it tries to change, or at least tries to destabilize by creating chaos and disorder.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has thus become the prime target of the fake and false news diffused around the world by the Zionists, the Americans, the Arab reactionary regimes, and of course, their local agents.

However, thanks to the vigilance of committed Iranians and their technological mastery, most of the fake news are neutralized and the correct information is provided through various means in different languages.

Therefore, Iran ought to upgrade its media networks, and in accordance with the genuine teachings of Islam – which are also the target of the satanic elements – it is entitled to whatever measures it deems necessary for not just broadcasting of facts but blocking of the falsities.