In an age of fake stories we always provide trusted news

Today, this newsroom 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 their ethos of always seeking to provide trusted news, campaigning on behalf of their communities, giving advertisers respected platforms to promote their services, exposing wrongdoing through painstaking investigations and ensuring that 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.

U.S. President Donald Trump

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 credence 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 that our newspapers and websites enhance and magnify your values. Your advertisements will appear alongside content that meets the very high standards to which our profession is committed.

Fake news can be hard to identify. In November, a BuzzFeed News analysis found that top fake presidential election news stories generated more total engagement on Facebook than top election stories from 19 major news outlets combined.

Facebook, stock
Facebook

The great global social media conglomerates have been slow to respond and grudging to intervene. When they do, they give the impression that their intercession is more favour than obligation. They sit outside all normal regulation that robustly holds traditional media to account and they are often immune from actions for defamation or contempt.

You would have thought politicians would have made the eradication of these hoax story sites a top priority, demanding that the global internet and social media giants must be made responsible for what they transmit.

Instead, it is established newspapers and their websites which continue to be the political whipping boys, expected to submit to the most rigorous regulation and the threat of the most pernicious and damaging regime of court costs on the planet while they seek to pursue honest, investigative journalism in the public interest.

Unlike social media and the major digital platforms, this newspaper and its website are accountable for every single word we publish.

We have signed up to a comprehensive Editors’ Code of Practice, which even our detractors have imitated, and we and all our staff have contractually bound themselves to its requirements. This code encompasses everything from accuracy to privacy, harassment, intrusion into grief or shock, protecting children, reporting crime and the use of clandestine devices and subterfuge.

It is explicit in the sensitivity we show in reporting suicides and protecting the most vulnerable in society, not least the victims of sexual assault.

As a result, virtually all the content that we generate ourselves is produced by journalists trained by the National Council for the Training of Journalists to the highest industry benchmarks. These reporters are qualified in a range of skills – from newspaper law and ethics to shorthand – to ensure we get every quote right.

'Hands Off HRI' march through Huddersfield Town Centre.
'Hands Off HRI' march through Huddersfield Town Centre.

Every word they write is checked in local newspaper offices by qualified, senior experts and if we do make a genuine mistake you can contact us immediately. We are real people, locally based, living in our shared communities. We’re not some digital algorithm.

We are passionate and exquisitely professional about the way in which we hold decision makers to account, represent our home towns and provide news and information that is suitable for whole families.

We are honest brokers of local information, upholding the values that you share with us, seeking always to do the right thing no matter how difficult that can sometimes be in fast changing times.

That all costs money. When you buy our paper or advertise with us you are supporting the very journalism and quality that keeps integrity at the heart of all we do.

We make a real difference.

In the past year alone, the campaigns run by local journalists have highlighted threats to hospitals and never more so than here in Huddersfield.

The Examiner started as a weekly in 1851 and became a daily in 1871 so we have been around a long time.

Many local newspapers have been the single catalyst for social change. At heart, they are the conscience of a community and the defender of its truth.

With pride, we provide trusted news and honest advertisement platforms and thanks to the tireless diligence of our editorial staff you can be confident that our stories are always exactly what they purport to be: the genuine article. Fact, not fake.

About the campaign:

Our Fighting Fake News campaign is aimed at reminding our readers and website users about the importance of our brands in bringing you Trusted News.

In a world where misinformation and unsubstantiated facts and stories can be published to huge audiences via social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, with no regulation, our brands have a long and proud history of bringing you well researched and accurate journalism.

Twitter bird logo

Throughout the campaign, we will be asking readers and advertisers to support us in delivering this message and to get involved in learning about how we carry out our trade.

Next week, we will be staging an Interactive Day, where we will open our newsrooms to our readers.

Via video channels we will showcase what our journalists do every day, we will invite readers to ask us questions about how we go about our jobs and invite you to take part in a Q and A session with some of our senior journalists.

Our campaign will also open out our journalists to check stories you may have heard about. Fact not Fiction will run throughout the campaign offering our readers the opportunity to ask our journalists to check out stories for them.

We will be talking to the business community and senior people in our communities to ask them to say why they value the trusted news service we deliver every day. We have also lined up a series of politicians and celebrities who will talk about why they believe the local print industry is important for local democracy.

Our plea to you today is to support this campaign, support local journalism which is under constant threat from unregulated, free and inferior content providers and to get involved with your local newspaper and website publisher.

Fact or Fake?

If you’re not sure that a snippet of local news you’ve seen on social media is fact or fake we can check it out.

Email our hotline at editorial@examiner.co.uk with a screen grab of the item or all the details you have and our trained professionals will investigate.

The story needs to be local and it must be passing itself off as news. Perhaps it is an alleged crime or a claim about a council decision.

We’ll let you know the outcome of our investigation and we will share the truth with our readers too.

Fake news – together we can fight it. And that’s a fact.