Despite great efforts by state agencies and organizations to call for cooperation to fight fake news and warn of serious consequences, the false news continues to appear on social media. 

Noting the arguments about the movie Dat Rung Phuong Nam (Song of the South), many groups, teams and individuals on Facebook, TikTok and YouTube have spread false information that “Director of the Cinema Department Vi Kien Thanh thinks that as a movie, Dat Rung Phuong Nam, is "bound to invent".

The movie had been accused of distorting history which raised controversy among the public. After that, rumors spread that “Chinese mass media thanked Vietnam as the Vietnamese had produced a movie about China in the 1920s."

Also social media said that “the Central Propaganda Committee has pointed out the scenes described as ‘distorting history’ to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) and has asked the film producer to fix the problems, including the costumes, plot and associations to make them suit the historical conditions when the story happened."

It was also falsely reported that Dat Rung Phuong Nam has been suspended to allow the film producer to adjust the wrong information and air it again only after the details are corrected.

However, involved parties and state officials quoted in the fake news item all have denied the information.

The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) last week warned of tge appearance of fake news related to the contents of a textbook. The ministry requested an investigation to find out the sources of the false information and clarify the responsibilities of the individuals and institutions which posted the information.

Most recently, some groups on Facebook spread fake news that an engineer of MoMo, an e-wallet, had erased all the data in databases.

The truth was that a problem had occurred with MoMo on October 19 as maintenance caused a short interruption for transactions, but the system was fixed and became operational at 4pm on the day.

Fake news was the topic of discussion at an ASEAN forum organized by the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) on September 19. The representatives of countries attending the event said that ASEAN countries need to strengthen cooperation among mass media management agencies to fight against fake news, which is now a global problem.

Van Anh