News is no longer all that is published, it is all that spreads | The Indian Express

News is no longer all that is published, it is all that spreads | The Indian Express

Written by Saurabh Kapoor |Updated: March 15, 2019 8:31:18 am

He works for The Indian Express.

News is no longer all that is published, it is all that spreads

Now stories become hashtags before they become headlines in your daily newspaper with almost no breaks between breaking news to regain perspective and restore balance.

A netwar can also be “an instrument for trying, early on, to prevent a real war from arising”.

In 1913, a socialist monthly in the US published a controversial cartoon showing the head of a prominent wire service pouring bottles of “lies,” “slander” and “prejudice” into the well of news. The Masses called it, “Poisoned at the Source”. In a world of accelerating interconnectedness a hundred years later, plugged into this source is a relentless social media conveyor belt. There are no bottles, but hashtags hidden in plain sight.