New Delhi, Aug 28 (TIWN) Supreme Court judge Justice D Y Chandrachud on Saturday said as citizens we must strive to ensure a press free from any influence and which also provides information in an unbiased manner.

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.

“As citizens, we must strive to ensure we have a press free from influence of any kind, political and economic. We need a press that will provide us information in an unbiased manner,” said Justice Chandrachud.  He said we live in a post-truth world and elaborated on its definition, which has two meanings.

“First, 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”, he 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 said social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook should be held responsible for false content, but people should 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 added 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.