BHUBANESWAR : Social media has posed a huge challenge to genuine journalism and there is an urgent need to differentiate between the two. While journalism is based on verifiable facts, social media is prone to noise, fake news and manufactured narratives, a panel of leading journalists observed at the SOA Literary Festival-2025 here on Sunday.

Speaking at the session, ‘Noise, News, Narrative: Whose Truth Do We Trust’, renowned journalist and editor of The New Indian Express Group, Santwana Bhattacharya said the job of a journalist is to present the truth.

“There is noise, which is most often deliberate, engineered and calibrated, but the responsibility of a journalist is to pick up truth and facts and present them before the people. News is based on evidence, verifiable from the ground and not going with the narrative,” she said.

Referring to the recent Bihar elections, she said a narrative was created about Chief Minister Nitish Kumar based on his failing health and special intensive revision (SIR) of voters’ list, sitting at New Delhi. But when she visited Bihar, the truth on the ground was different from the narrative. There was instead a sympathy for Nitish Kumar, she said.

Bhattacharya stated that journalism today was in a crisis and it was more due to the problems within and not for social media. Journalists are not in competition with social media influencers. But, they have to be careful in not bringing their ideologies, likes and dislikes to work.

They have to be honest to what they see and report. She referred to a series of news reports by the Bhubaneswar edition of TNIE on roads being built inside reserve forest. “After the news reports came out, the project was revisited by the government. That is the power of journalism,” she said.

Journalist, poet and literary critic A Krishna Rao also said news is truth without colour or masala. Journalists should not be influenced by any ideology when they work or else they will not be honest to news. Senior journalists Sikta Deo and Prashant V Singh observed that social media is being aggressively used for setting the narrative.

Fake news is being pushed hard and fast through social media. Therefore, one has to be very careful and discerning while seeking news through social media. There should be strict fact-checking to find out the truth, they opined.

The session was moderated by well-known writer and filmmaker Biyot Projna Tripathy.

The SOA Yuva Sahitya Puraskar was presented on the day to young writer Suryasnata Tripathy for his collection of short stories titled ‘Thia Puchi Naranga’. Vice-president of SOA Saswati Das presented the award to Tripathy comprising a silver plaque, a citation, a shawl and a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh.

Pro V-C of SOA Prasanta Kumar Patra presided over the function which was also addressed by Gayatribala Panda, head of PPRACHIN and festival director, and Jyoti Ranjan Das, dean (students’ welfare) and chief coordinator of the event.