Deadly consequences of fake news: When WhatsApp becomes the paper of record

More urgent question for a democracy is why we seem so eager to believe what shows up on the phone

Not long ago a journalist acquaintance shared a “BBC” survey ranking the Congress Party as the fourth most corrupt in the world. The Congress might well be a den of corruption but there is no BBC survey proving it. This was from something deviously called BBC News Point akin to Ashwathama elephant. The list also included parties that had not existed since World War II such as the Nazi Party in Germany and the Nationalist Fascist Party in Italy but that did not faze the journalist who shared it.  The survey fit neatly with his worldview and that was fact-checking