Defining fake news: What is it, after all?

Winston Churchill once famously said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.” Today, in the age of social media, that lie may well travel around the world ten times over. A lie packaged as fake news has now become a major menace — an industry unto itself. Savour this: between April 2020 and April 2025, in a span of five years, the PIB Fact Check Unit received over 1.6 lakh queries and debunked more than 2,200 fake news items. These numbers reveal the vast scale of the problem. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, as it is only a small fraction of the misinformation circulating each day. The rot runs deep and is increasing with every passing day, thanks to social media and AI-generated deepfakes that make it more authentic and believable than ever before.

Now, at last, some headway is being made to understand it and define it to put it into legal terms. The parliamentary panel led by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey has rightly recognised a central challenge: India still lacks a precise, legally enforceable definition of fake news. This ambiguity makes regulation inconsistent and largely ineffective. It is used to describe everything from satirical content to state-sponsored propaganda. This looseness allows harmful misinformation to slip through the cracks while also enabling powerful actors to misuse the label for news inconvenient to them.

Fake news should be understood as any content that is wholly or partially false, presented as genuine news, and created deliberately to mislead or manipulate public opinion. The key element here is intent — not mere error or opinion, but deliberate fabrication. The problem gets compounded when celebrities and influencers — politicians, film stars, sportsmen, Godmen — indulge in it, distorting perception and creating confusion in the minds of the people.

For India to regulate fake news without compromising constitutional freedoms, especially the freedom of speech, the definition must be crafted with precision. It should be narrow enough to prevent misuse, yet broad enough to capture the spectrum of harmful, deceptive content. The committee has rightly noted that striking this delicate balance is essential.

Fake news is not a simple case of misinformation; it is engineered deception. Once these falsehoods take root, they distort public perception and poison democratic discourse. In recent years, misinformation in India has fuelled mob violence, stoked communal tensions, undermined faith in public health measures, and intensified political polarisation. A nation can survive disagreements, but it cannot function amid disorientation and distrust. In this sense, fake news behaves like cancer: spreading silently, affecting vital systems, and weakening the entire democratic body.

If India does not act now — by defining fake news clearly, ensuring checks against misuse, and strengthening accountability — misinformation could grow into a threat far beyond regulatory control.