Ranking the ranker

ISLAMABAD: The media is abuzz with purported international ranking of top-10 military commanders in the world declaring Chief of the Army Staff General Raheel Sharif the best among them.

A website that did this ranking last delivered good news to Pakistanis in April 2015 by declaring Islamabad the second most beautiful capital of the world only after London. Berlin seized third position in this ranking followed by Washington, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Budapest, Ottawa and Moscow.

Starving for good news about their country, Pakistanis frantically shared the story. Newspapers also splashed it without bothering to determine its veracity. Less to no attention was paid to check how authentic is that website, ABC News Point, a name many readers tend to confuse with American TV network, ABC News.

As Capital Development Authority got wind of this ranking, it also tried to steal the credit as an agency behind making this happen. A giant signboard on a greenbelt read “Islamabad second Most Beautiful Capital of the World.”

The News then rang a senior CDA officer inquiring about the criteria governing this ranking and the credibility of the ranker. “I had the same questions in mind when read the signboard on my way to office from home,” he replied. Answer was not different of another official spoken on this issue.

However, the CDA was less interested in authenticity of the rating and more to use the ignorance of the masses.

The board remained at display for quite some time creating a feel-good factor among citizens considering themselves privileged to live in the world’s second most beautiful capital.  This was not the first ranking of the otherwise obscure website. In December 2014, it rated the world’s top-10 intelligence agencies giving ISI the highest score. This news was also greeted with enthusiasm and as a moment of pride that the premier intelligence agency has received the best international ranking.

However, in none of the case, any criterion has been defined against which Islamabad as a city, Raheel Sharif as military commander and the ISI as spy agency have been examined.

A visit to the website reveals it was launched only in 2014. There is no office address and no phone number given on the website. “It is a local blog live for last two years having 60% users from Pakistan and India,” commented Mohsin Aziz, a website developer.

If the readers’ feedback on military commanders’ ranking is any guide, the website is not frequented by readers and those who do are predominantly Pakistanis followed by Indians.

The ranking that declared Gen Raheel the best military commander was uploaded in September 2015 only to appear on the radar of Pakistani media a couple of days ago. In four-month duration, the ranking has only received 32 comments. Out of them, 22 comments are of Pakistanis and ten from Indians. This traffic tells a lot about the authenticity of the website. Also the fact remains that none outside Pakistan has reported this ranking.

As for as the ISI’s ranking being number one agency in the world is concerned, it was first done a few years before the launch of this website under question. Search indicates that the previous ranking was attributed to “American Crime News Report”. Considering it a website, it either has never existed or has closed now since there is no reference of it other than this ranking.

However, media instead of checking its authenticity did several talks shows in last two-three years attributing it to American Crime News Report. Another website, Online News Point, remained in appearance before ABC News Point flashing ranking on intelligence agencies.

Although disinformation has never been in small quantity, it has increased manifold after the proliferation of internet that, according to a British journalist Rhodri Marsden, has a “long tradition of baiting the gullible and misleading the inattentive.”

In an article entitled “Websites can create outrageous lies just for clicks, but why and how this is legal,” Rhodri notes that fake news can get millions of views whereas combating the disinformation is a thankless and unrewarding task with debunking articles rarely achieving the widespread traction of the original.

Pakistani media is not the only one picking unfounded stories from such websites, Bangladeshi newspapers lifted a story about Neil Armstrong raising questions whether he went or not to the moon. Originally, it was carried by The Onion. Unlike ABC News Point, The Onion is a declared satirical site but editors in Bangladesh mistook it as serious news and later apologised for publishing it.

Likewise, a hoax website announced that former vice presidential candidate in the US, Sarah Palin would host a show in Al-Jazeera and Washington Post carried that in a blog without verification only to face embarrassment later on.

Pakistani electronic and print media not only carry such ranking by obscure websites, Wikipedia is also often referred to as a trusted source of information by senior and serious journalists without realising that anybody can edit this site and scores of versions are altered daily. Wikipedia is not for attribution, however, there is no harm in checking the references cited as a source of information.