People's trust is the key tool in fighting fake news online, BelTA learned from Belarusian First Deputy Information Minister Pavel Lyogky during the 13th Belarusian international media forum Partnership for the Future: Digital Agenda for Media Space.
The official said: “First of all, mass media need a certain degree of trust in order to confidently respond to any fake news and nip them in the bud. Second, the audience needs to be as large as possible. If our resources and capabilities allow covering the space where the fake news is spreading, the problem can be resolved. This is why you have to fight for the audience and people's trust.”
Vladimir Sungorkin, editor-in-chief of the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, noted that the legal measures to control such information should be discussed with many experts. “Digital technologies are our strategy and our future. All the mass media are going digital. There are no alternatives. This space is so new and unprecedented that rushing legislative initiatives is not a good idea,” he said.
Vladimir Sungorkin went on saying that conventional media will continue existing as long as they are needed. “Printed media are now financed by readers and by advertisers. But it is the people of an older age, who are interested in newspapers, while the masses and young people dive into the Internet, a more comfortable environment where they should get genuine information,” stressed the Komsomolskaya Pravda editor-in-chief.
The 13th Belarusian international media forum Partnership for the Future: Digital Agenda for Media Space is taking place in Minsk on 11-14 September. Some 300 people representing about 30 CIS and non-CIS countries are taking part in it.