Who can you really trust?

We need to do a better job in holding to our journalistic standards

As mishaps of misinformation and disasters of disinformation spread through the digital ecosystem, determining who you can trust for news and verified information is more important than ever.

If you do not already clearly understand this reality of living in our wired world, you must: Just because some information shows up in your Google search list or Facebook news feed does not make it a fact. Case in point: the amount of misinformation and outright lies that circulated on the internet this week following the devastating gun violence in Las Vegas that took the lives of 59 people, including four Canadians.

“In the crucial early hours after the Las Vegas mass shooting it happened again: Hoaxes, completely unverified rumours, failed witch hunts and blatant falsehoods spread across the internet,” Alexis C. Madrigal, a writer for the Atlantic, wrote in an excellent piece about how such hoaxes, rumours and lies spread through the information infrastructure of digital platforms Google, Facebook and YouTube.

Titled “Google and Facebook failed us,” the article is a strong indictment of “the world’s most powerful information gatekeepers” and the seeming failure of the artificial intelligence algorithms that power them to halt the virulent spread of false information.

“Imagine a newspaper posting unverified rumours about a shooter from a bunch of readers who had been known to perpetuate hoaxes. There would be hell to pay — and for good reason,” Madrigal writes.

Hell to pay indeed. Journalistic standards of accuracy and fairness that have long served as the foundation for traditional news outlets demand that information is verified before it is published or broadcast. Such standards have long guided the Toronto Star.

That doesn’t mean mistakes of misinformation do not ever happen here. But publishing false information is not a deliberate act, and when we err we correct with the aim of halting the spread of wrong information. Accountability and transparency are guiding values here.

There are no such assurances of these journalistic values among some of the varied sources of information that can come to you these days via the powerful platforms that now dominate the digital space. As Buzzfeed reporter Ryan Broderick’s roundup of published misinformation related to the Vegas violence makes clear, much garbage went viral this week through social media. One post claimed that the shooter was a 32-year-old Islam convert and included a name and photo of a man identified as such. Another posted a photo of a porn star with the words, “My dad is missing after Las Vegas shooting. Please RT (retweet) and share.”

Is it any wonder we are in the midst of a crisis in trust in media overall, with numerous journalism trust initiatives now underway around the world — including at the Star — to seek to build trust with our audiences? Indeed, “who are you going to trust?” and “what will you believe?” are key questions for all of us these days.

“With the digitalization of news, it can be very difficult to tell real news from fake news; they can look identical. That’s why it’s important to know the red flags to look for that may indicate a story is not real,” Michael MaLoon, VP of the News Media Alliance, which represents the U.S. news media industry, said this week in announcing a campaign that calls on the public to support real news by turning to reputable trusted news sources and trained journalists who adhere to a journalistic code of ethics.

“If we truly want to get audiences to stop falling for false stories, we have to teach them how it comes about, how it spreads, who’s behind it, and how they can avoid it in the future,” Mandy Jenkins, head of news for Storyful, an organization that verifies online content, said this week in a report about the News Media Alliance initiative published on EContent.

Let me be perfectly clear that I believe the onus is on news organizations and individual journalists to do whatever we can to restore trust in journalism. I say this because a reader this week told me that in my writing about reader trust, it can sometimes sound as if I am blaming readers for not understanding journalism.

I am sorry if I gave even one reader that impression; it is not my view. I have long believed that journalists must earn the trust of our readers. And given the realities of today’s chaotic media landscape, and all that we cannot control, we need to do a better job than ever before in holding to our journalistic standards and doing what we can to create more understanding for readers of what they should expect of us.

As Storyful’s Jenkins so aptly put it in the EContent article this week: “The press also has to prove it’s better than the propaganda suggests and hold themselves to higher standards of verification, analysis, accuracy, privacy and authenticity.” publiced@thestar.ca