Wilfried Runde (Deautsche Welle, Germany) and Vincent Ryan (Google News Lab, France) asserted that the basic rules of journalism are being challenged more than ever in this era of fake news. They gave multiple examples of fake news across natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
Runde stated that to stick to the truth and to ease the working process of news verification, it is now possible to use powerful tools to check the facts, the places, the people, the time and more. Runde said “as a journalist you need to be quick.”
And his suggestion for a quick fix on fake news was a Twitter verification source called ‘Truly.’ It provides knowledge to help you recognise bots, trolls, and fake news via source information, timings and locations. You can also invite colleagues and experts into the verification process to add their thoughts. It has been vastly used by Amnesty International.
Runde also suggested ‘InVid’ for video verification. This plugin will automatically search images and other videos – and confirm if you are dealing with a fake source.
Ryan added his thoughts from the Google News Lab in London. They provide online training specifically for journalists. He suggested setting up Google Search Alerts on stories you are working on. And he also brought up Google Trends – which allows you to find out what people are searching for. He said “people ask google things they would never ask anyone else.” And you can see how long people are interested in those things for, and where they are.
