By Advaita Mehrotra
Sambaran Dutta is an Associate Director at Accenture Bangalore who always keeps up with the news and is very knowledgeable. He has considerable experience with news and information handling, and interviewing him gave an interesting insight on news and biases.
Newspapers are very important as they give perspectives on what is going on and it has impacts on people’s jobs. However, with so much news going around the world, and being so easy to access, fake news is also prominent and has become a significant issue that can impact decisions and change opinions.
The news can be very important for people who work in any corporate jobs. After interviewing Sambaran Dutta, I was able to understand the perspective of someone who works in an IT job.
“The news has a lot of bias, but I try to form my own opinion after reading all the news from different sources. This gives different points of view. Additionally, in politics, where bias is the most prominent, I try to read news from both sides of the political spectrum. I also try to keep my own personal opinions away when I read the news so that I get the most amount of information that is accurate.”
Newspapers may spread fake news, but social media can be filled with different sources of fake news. According to Sambaran, it is very easy to get affected by fake news, even people who are very intelligent. Therefore, he says that getting news from social media isn’t usually a great idea as there are no edits and it is simply raw information that is viewed by multiple people. Due to this, his decisions haven’t been affected by news either.
There are also many solutions to stop fake news from spreading and to avoid biases in news to get the most amount of information out of articles.
“If you believe something and you only meet the people that you relate with then you only reinforce the beliefs. It’s important to share ideas with people who do not relate with your opinions and point of views to stop fake news from spreading. Be open to different beliefs and perspectives.”
To conclude, newspapers are important due to the perspectives they give. News and information are accessible to almost everyone through social media or newspapers. With all the information going around, some of it is fake or biased. This can be avoided, however, with being open-minded to information.