It is now a cliché that there are floods of false social media reports (or claims, or posts, or videos, or recordings) about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
My personal favourite? The video in which a Ukrainian pilot nicknamed “The Ghost of Kyiv” in a MIG-29 shoots down a Russian SU-35. Turns out the footage is from a video game.
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This is the year of the little round virus. So it’s also the year when we all really, seriously, need to get a grip on “fake news”. It’s always been important, but we are now in a place where sharing something dodgy on WhatsApp might affect someone else’s health.
Journalists are engaged in complex debates about this (of course) – what is fake news, how to counter it, is fake news even the right term for it?
For everyone else, this is what you need to know.
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Picture: Nick Youngson, Alpha Stock Images
A whole cottage industry has sprung up among journalists, reacting to the phenomenon of “fake” news. There’s no doubt this is a crucially important issue for our craft, and much needs to be discussed and done.
In the heat of that debate, though, we perhaps forget about readers, who are wondering if they will be the next person to share – inadvertently – some spurious bit of nonsense or propaganda. With that person in mind, I was interested to come across a list of WikiTribune’s preferred news sources.
WikiTribune, according to its Wikipedia entry, is a news website in which journalists with established backgrounds “research, syndicate and report on widely publicised news stories alongside volunteers who curate articles by proofreading, fact-checking, suggesting possible changes, and adding sources from other, usually long established outlets”. Continue reading
