Fighting third millennium hoaxes “Truth of the news, an asset to be protected”

Corriere di Bergamo / by Fabio Paravisi.

At some point someone escapes the word “hoax.” But, the speakers themselves remind us, the term dates back to the days when fake news was peddled in bars and doorways.

Today “the bar has gone global and fake news can do much more damage.” “Facts are no longer the priority,” said Bergamo Rector Remo Morzenti Pellegrini, “today the focus is on emotionally capturing the attention of readers. That’s why it is to “fake news” and their “ghost” that Città Impresa dedicated the debate with Corriere della Sera editor Luciano Fontana and Luiss University of Rome rector Paola Severino.

“It is false information produced in a malicious and organized manner, for economic and political reasons,” is the definition from which Fontana started. Disinformation is organized, 1.6 billion people in the world are connected every day on Faceboook and 63 percent of young people get their information from the Net with news that is often unverifiable and difficult to repair.” “We are dealing with fake news, which is fake news with malicious accentuation or gross negligence,” Severino distinguishes, as a jurist, “but also with post-truth, which affects people’s sentiment, and on which the election campaigns of Trump and Brexit were based. This is the starting point for understanding the critical points, consequences and possible remedies. “The digital revolution is great, we feel connected to millions of people,” Fontana warns, “but in reality we are in communities that are too identical to us, to which we are being channeled by algorithms. So there are no conditions for the growth of critical judgment. Just as I would never want to be around only people who always agree with me, I would also not want to have to deal with information that reflects only what I think, prejudices included.” With an aggravating factor, Severino recalls, “Anonymity is the source of irresponsibility on various levels, one feels one can do whatever one wants. We need to eliminate anonymity in all its articulations, including bitcoins that serve illicit transactions.”

The problem is that against fake news one cannot defend oneself, the former minister continues, “By the time one intervenes the news has traveled millions of miles, if it is deleted from the main site it remains in secondary ones. And there is no longer a right to be forgotten. All with the illusion of freebies. It can defend us knowing that there are always those who make money from it. And there is one good thing: the value of truth over false is reactivated, and it is understood that the truth of a news story is a value to be protected.”

An added stimulus for the professionalism of those who are in the news business. “It is a cultural battle, and for us an opportunity to do serious journalism,” Fontana summarizes. The tool that monitors the Corriere website is recommending to me the way to get the most hits: Belen’s latest performances, kitten galleries, and Maionchi’s fights. We know that this is a relentless wave and that these things get a hundred times more hits than an editorial. But we charge for our site because we want to be able to do serious, factual, independent and original reporting. It is a difficult challenge but one that goes forward-a guarantee for the formation of a country and its democracy. We want to think that in the stormy sea of information there is an anchor to cling to.”

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