By Ruma Dubey

Two days ago, the Indian corporate world was agog with rumours that Azim Premji and his family were making an exit from Wipro, selling their entire stake in the company. This was promptly squashed by Premji himself, issuing a clarification that there was no truth in this news; he remains firmly committed to the business.

We thought that was the end of one nasty rumour and yesterday, one more started floating – cofounders of Infosys were planning to sell their entire stake and completely exit out of the company. The rumours also added some tadka to the spice – the cofounders were unhappy with the way in which the new management was running the company. Here too, the company was prompt to issue a denial.

But what bothers the mind is – from where are these back-to-back rumours of bigcap IT companies selling stake ad exiting the business coming from? There had to have been some base on which this was built up? Was it that the Premji’s in informal discussions, given the stress on the IT sector currently, talking offhandedly about an exit? Was this then extrapolated to Infosys also, given the fact that Narayana Murthy has been quite vocal about issues at Infosys, be it the salary of Sikka or pricing pressures. In fact it would be no exaggeration to say that Murthy has time and again made these comments and caused more harm than good.

Coming back to this point, rumours or fake news have indeed become a BIG deal today. Given the way in which news breaks out, everyone in this rush to be the first and bring us “exclusive news” puts out reports without verifying the truth.

With the explosion of information, with too much news coming in from all corners of the world, through various vehicles of media, it has become virtually impossible to always go back and check for veracity of the source. In this fast moving world, the one with the “breaking news” rules the rooster. Thus when there are so many sources and so much news, media has become a matter of choice – people choose what they news they want and which source they trust. Trust has become a matter of choice.

So what can we rely on today? Are developed nations such as US and UK completely ‘media transparent’? Is media relaible, at all? And, if yes, which form of media is the most reliable?  The answers to most of the above questions are pretty straightforward: you cannot rely on a single form of media for news.

Each form of media has its own pros and cons and as a consumer, it is on us, to decide which form of media to trust. We cannot rely on only social media or web papers for news nor can we blindly trust the news shown on TV or that we hear on radio. In today’s age of information overload, we need to verify information from all sources to come up with our conclusion of what actually is news.

Read between the lines – if the report calls it a rumour, it most likely means it has emerged from thin air but if the report says “unconfirmed news” it could mean that the report had a source. The line between the two is very thin and it is ultimately only logical and unemotional thinking which will help you separate the chaff from the grain.