Pressing problems for media old and new
The article discusses how fake news could have influenced the US election because of misinformation on Facebook but the article believes this is only tinkering around the edges of a major problem. It is possible to police the publishing and broadcasting industry if nations are willing to do it. Sufficient staff (not artificial intelligence) need to be employed to fact check before publishing or broadcasting. Facebook has the power to influence on a macro scale, so it should also come under the same regulation and the social networking site shouldn't be too concerned on costs as they certainly would be able to afford the cost of editorial teams to manage its publications. A policy like 'if in doubt, don't publish' can be used by news institutions which would ensure truthful news is being published allowing audiences to be reliant on news.
I do believe this would be a positive move for news institutions but convincing audiences that their news is now truthful compared to before may be difficult. Audiences have become accustomed to what they would expect to see from specific news institutes in particular views and values. For example, audiences may believe that a newspaper like the Daily Mail (right wing) is slightly bias towards conservatives and middle upper class citizens so may not be inclined to read those newspapers if they don't share the same ideologies. So even if the Daily Mail were to announce that they are taking a more balanced viewpoint of news stories, audiences probably wouldn't be influenced or incentivise to read from this newspaper or article online. However, this wouldn't stop them from going forward with the plan to be more truthful on news stories because audiences have the availability of digital media and so can do more research on news stories else where. Therefore, Daily Mail would know this and wouldn't want to get caught out for not exploring the whole of a news story.
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