Action urged against social media turning rumour mills

Manama : Bahrain-based journalists have urged the authorities to place heavy emphasis on curbing the menace of social media misuse when the press law is revised, in view of the many recent misleading reports that have emerged in such websites. 

While newspapers and other media outlets work to meet quality standards under guidelines set by the authorities, social media pages often take a more casual approach and become rumour mills, journalists say expressing their concern.  

“When it comes to publishing news, they think they have complete freedom. There is not much supervision in what they do. It is an issue when they write these rumours without second thoughts  and publish it right away,” Journalist Mohammed Jaousi stated. 

Bahrain authorities, including the Interior Ministry, Ministry of Health and General Directorate of Traffic are among the victims of such reports in recent years. 

Recently, a rumour was spread that a female gynaecology consultant severed the head of a baby during a delivery, adding that the consultant apparently went into hiding after that. However, the National Health Regulatory Authority (NHRA) promptly denied the rumour. 

Earlier this month, Gulf Air denied rumours circulating on social media that one of its planes collided with a Kuwait Airways aircraft on the Kuwait Airport runway. 

According to the Public Prosecution, a total of 61 complaints were recently filed against people who apparently misused social networks to insult MPs. The offenders are now facing jail terms and fines up to BD500 for tweeting against MPs in a way that was described as “an exploitation of freedom of expression and speech”.

However, Bahrain has been taking steps in the right direction. Recently, security officials announced that group admins on WhatsApp are legally responsible of the contents being circulated through the application’s chat rooms that they are managing. 

‘Copy-pasting’ hurts journalists 

The social media news outlets often ‘copy-paste’ the work done by the journalists to provide their readers with content. This practice is directly affecting journalists and the establishments they work for. 

Jaousi said, “The news reports by the journalists are intellectual property. An agreement needs to be in place streamlining how this intellectual property can be protected.”

Another journalist, Khalid Mousa, added, “This is being done on a daily basis. They take the news report from the publications and publish it as their report. They remove the names of the media outlet and the journalist. I think this issue is prevalent in the whole region.”