Need to ensure press is free from bias: Justice Chandrachud

Supreme Court judge Justice D Y Chandrachud on Saturday emphasised the need to ensure a free press to provide information in an unbiased manner.

He also said that similarly, schools and universities need to be supported to ensure that they create an atmosphere where students can learn to differentiate truth from falsehood and develop a temperament for questioning those in power.

"We must strive to ensure that we have a press that is free from influence of any kind, political or economic, which will provide us information in an unbiased manner," he said.

Justice Chandrachud was delivering a talk on the topic "Speaking Truth to Power: Citizens and the Law" as part of the 6th MC Chagla Memorial Online Lecture.

He said, to counter the spread of fake news, we need to strengthen our public institutions.

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"It has become exceedingly difficult for citizens to find the truth in this time and age. Second, having found the truth they do not care about the truth," Justice Chandrachud said.

He added "there is a contest between 'our truth' vs 'your truth', and there is also a tendency to ignore a 'truth', which is not aligned with one's perception or political inclination.

He pointed that social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook should be held responsible for false content, but people should also be more vigilant and learn to accept different opinions.

“We incline towards echo chambers and don't like opposing beliefs... we live in a world that is increasingly divided along social, economic and religious lines," he said.

Justice Chandrachud further pointed out that it is undeniable that the phenomenon of fake news is on the rise and a pertinent example of this is that the World Health Organization (WHO) recently termed the current Covid-19 pandemic as “infodemic” and highlighted the overabundance of misinformation online.