As of recent years, fake news stories having been running rampant within the media. Headlines like 'Nine Italian nuns pregnant after offering shelter to north African immigrants' and 'Man falls from bridge while playing Pokemon Go' are just examples of these kind of articles. A report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism stated that stories of this false nature mainly came about in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election as well as the EU referendum, giving rise to the term 'post-fact' or 'post-truth.' Democracy is said to be the main thing at risk here with fake news essentially contributing to its destabilisation. Teyit.org is one of the fact-checking agencies among many others since 2010 that have had to be formed to combat against the influx of fake news that there's been. Not only this but Full Fact, a British charity, is currently developing an app for journalists to allow them to instantly check statistics they happen to hear at press conferences in order to confirm their credibility. The examples continue here with the Washington Post now fact-checking tweets posted by Donald Trump, attaching a note when any inaccuracies are found and also papers like Le Monde in France creating a whole fact-checking division within it. What's done is Teyit to prevent the dissemination of fake news is users of social media are invited to report stories they suspect are false to a WhatsApp hotline which founder of the agency cites as helping encourage 'critical thinking' within audiences. Nonpartisanism is something that still wants to be maintained while this fact-checking is being done though by the different agencies. They of course though, want to establish clearly that lies are lies and falsehoods are falsehoods and not use the term 'alternative facts' which the Reuters Institute laid out.
- According to a report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, more than 90% of fact-checking agencies have been established since 2010 - 50 have launched in the past 2 years alone
- Since Teyit.org's opening three months ago, there have been some 3000 alerts regarding investigation and debunking of fake stories
What's now being able to be seen is that there is now actual action being taken in the fight against fake news. While a couple of months ago all stories on it revolved around the rise of fake news on social networks like Facebook particularly around the run-up of both the EU referendum and US election, we're now seeing stories showing the methods fact-checking agencies are implementing to prevent its spread. It's interesting here too that it's a number of different countries that are putting measures in place rather than just one, so with this it has to be paid attention to whether or not they'll be capable of putting at least a reduction in the amount of fake news stories that go about.
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