Building Trust in Digital Journalism: Countering Fake News, Misinformation and Disinformation

Journalism, once a highly specialised field built on the concept of the ‘journalistic truth’, the professional discipline of assembling and verifying facts, has become highly sophisticated, technology and data-driven. With increasing corporatisation of media, consolidation of ownership, and backward and forward linkages, it is becoming increasingly commercial and emerging as one of the most competitive and high-risk professions in the world. It is predominantly a two-step process: discovering news and reporting it. In recent years, especially post Covid-19, the majority of the news organisations in the South Asian region have attempted to pivot to a digital business model, leading to a phase of hyper-competition where journalists are under tremendous pressure to not just bring in quick news reports but also drive traffic and engagement to websites, apps and portals. The era of pins, pokes, likes, shares and favourites also has an impact of the role of the journalist, editor, media owners. This pressure has led to news reports which are quick and sensational, especially where this is a lack of a clear ethical editorial board and no checks and balances. The obsession for sensation, in addition to editorial influence of the big advertisers, has led to an era of misinformation, disinformation and fake news, and the latter being an oxymoron as ‘news’ meant to be fact-based, objective, verifiable information. It is more critical than ever for the media in South Asian countries to develop rigourous norms for engaging with, creating and sharing information while empowering their audiences to do the same. For the media to be the fourth pillar of democracy, journalists have to be doubly sure about their sources, allowing their audiences to make their own assessment of the information. The digital space has given people both voice and agency with each user now having a significant opportunity to influence others without the gatekeepers. In this context, it has become more important than ever to ‘get it right’, ‘it’ including the 4 Cs—context, content, criticism and conversations. This chapter looks at the current state of journalism in the digital space, the mis/disinformation challenge and various factors that govern news with the aim of providing recommendations for course correction, enhancing and building digital trust.