DigiBangla got the recognition of authenticity
DigiBangla, the country's only information technology, telecom and youth bilingual portal, has been placed in the list of publishing accurate news on online portals. The portal has been ranked among 57 online portals including the country's top local daily, The Daily Star, international media Deutsche Welle Bangla, Voice of America and Bangladeshi portal Bangla Tribune in providing accurate news. However, 18 new news portals have been added to the queue for publishing wrong information. Of course, none of them are very well-known names.
This information was obtained from the report ' Statistics of misinformation in the first six months of the media 2024 ' published by Rumor Scanner, a Bangladeshi fact-check organization recognized by the international fact-checking network, on Monday afternoon .
According to this half-yearly report, the most incorrect information was published in the country's online portals in the month of March. A maximum of 22 misinformation (28 percent) was detected this month. Daily Kalbela was at the top for spreading wrong information. Rumor Scanner found evidence of 20 false news campaigns from January to June by analyzing the news published on the media's website, YouTube channel and Facebook page. Among these, the top five misinformation campaigns were on religious topics, accounting for about 25 percent.
A month-by-month analysis identified 14 (18 percent) false news stories in April. The least amount of misinformation detected was in February, with 7. Rumor Scanner published this report identifying a total of 78 reports as false.
Out of the reports, 41 were false, 35 were misleading and 2 were distorted in the media as true information. Statistical analysis shows that the rate of spreading false information in these cases was about 52 percent. Moreover, the rate of spreading misleading information is about 45 percent.
The most misreported stories were about national issues (14), accounting for 18 percent. The second highest prevalence of fake news was reported on international issues (13). The number of false news campaigns on sports and religion was 11, the third highest. Apart from this, 9 on environment and climate, 7 on politics, 6 on entertainment, 3 on education and 2 on science and technology have been spread. Rumor Scanner found an equal number (one each) of misinformation about health and fraud.
One misinformation was found in science and technology and one in environment and climate category. In the meantime, Mark Zuckerberg did not ask users to 'chill' in the event of Facebook down. All the leading dailies of the country, online and television also got the news wrong. However, DigiBangla has maintained professionalism in this regard even with information technology news first.
Meanwhile, Rumor Scanner has seen a fake news being published on the website of Bangladesh's state media 'Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS)' in the first six months. Last March, the media published a news about the import of 300 tons of onions through Hili land port in Dinajpur. Later investigation revealed that no onion was imported from India through Hili land port at that time. However, in the first six months of this year, the state broadcaster Bangladesh Television did not find any evidence of disinformation.
