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Today, this newspaper joins forces with local and regional titles across the UK to launch a campaign to fight fake news. As we approach the most significant national election in a generation, the need for independent local newspapers and their websites to report and explain the issues in an entirely neutral, honest and balanced way is essential.
This approach is in keeping with the ethos of always seeking to provide trusted news, campaigning on behalf of communities, giving advertisers respected platforms to promote their services, exposing wrongdoing through painstaking investigations, and ensuring the voice of residents and the business community is heard with clarity and authority.
This election will be different from any other.
It is not simply that the outcome will define our future relationship with the EU and the manner in which it is negotiated, but it will be held in the context of the phenomenon of fake news.
In the past 12 months there has barely been a single global event, from the election of the President of the United States to an incident involving a gunman at a Washington pizzeria, that has not been infected by the suggestion that entirely fabricated information designed to deceive had been circulated indiscriminately via social media.
Fake news takes many forms and operates at several levels.
At its most extreme and democratically destructive, it comprises deliberately and maliciously contrived statements which are cynically distributed in the guise of real news with the aim of deceiving for political or financial gain.
More frequently, it is an unsubstantiated rumour indiscriminately posted on social media sites which rapidly gains cre- dence, to the distress of those featured in it and the alarm of all who read it.
Repetition through “shares” and “likes” adds an undeserved authority.
Comment, unlabelled as such, masquerades as truth. Satire is confused with reality.
“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”, is a law of propaganda often attributed to the Nazi Joseph Goebbels.
It is little surprise that major businesses – whose role is critical to jobs and the economic success on which we all depend – are increasingly shunning digital sites that have placed their advertisements alongside extremist and offensive material.
That would never happen within our print and digital pages.
When you advertise your business with us, you are sharing in the family values that underpin everything we do.
We are uniquely placed to ensure our newspapers and websites enhance and magnify your values.
You will never find your advertisement alongside content that denigrates, demeans and falls short of the very high standards to which our profession is committed.