News accuracy

Re: Are you complicit in spreading fake news? — Jan. 4

Not enough can be said about the fine article on fake news, which presents a serious threat to democracy.

To many, the whole idea of fake or false news should come as no surprise, dating as it does from the first-century BCE to present day. Poor Mark Antony, we are told, ended up back then taking his own life about false rumours of how bad he was, and especially by Cleopatra who spread rumours that had claimed she took her own life.

What is disturbing today is there seems to be such a proliferation of fake news in all strata, including mainstream media, the internet and social media. The

International Fact-checking Network formed in 2015 to support international co-operation in fact checking and training.

It also publishing a set of principles that included things like considering the source of information, reading beyond headlines, checking the author, finding supporting sources, checking dates for relevancy, finding supporting sources, checking personal biases and asking the experts.

All this is good advice to be sure. It is a challenge to journalism to ensure the accuracy of the news. The article is right when it speaks of complicity in the spread of fake news, whether directly or indirectly. And that would seem to me to place a huge onus on everyone, institutions and people alike, to take stock of their own actions so

that falsehoods are stopped in their tracks. Claude McDonald Kitchener