TASS News Agency suggests world media charter to fight fake news

Jakarta (Indonesia Window) – Alike an infectious disease, fake news spreads fast and is able to cross the boundaries around the world.

Efforts to stem the distribution of false information, especially those circulating in cyberspace, keep continuing to be made, yet fake news is like a virus that always finds other forms to spread in every level of society.

Russia’s leading news agency TASS put forward an initiative to ratify a global media charter to fight fake and false news, as quoted by Indonesia Window here on Tuesday.

“Fake news is a threat to global stability,” TASS First Deputy Director General Mikhail Gusman told the World Media Summit (WMS) presidium in Shanghai on Monday (Nov 18).

“I would say false reports in the media sphere create a major and appalling danger to peace,” he emphasized.

“False information, or more precisely, misinformation and the manipulation of information have become weaponized, and actively utilized by various forces in order to achieve different political and economic goals,” Gusman remarked.

According to Gusman, the topic of countering the rising tide of fake news is being discussed at various platforms.

Representatives from Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP), Kyodo and other news agencies spoke at the meeting about the threats that stem from fake news.

TASS’ First Deputy Director General suggested that at the next World Media Summit, scheduled for 2020 in China, the parties should formulate a special global media charter to combat misinformation and fake news.

The draft charter can be drawn up by TASS jointly with other members of the World Media Summit (WMS) presidium, he said.

At the meeting, the sides discussed the challenges and prospects that media outlets face given the proliferation of new media technologies.

The event, which is held at the initiative of China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, is attended by the world’s major news agencies – TASS, Associated Press, Reuters, the BBC, Agence France-Presse (AFP), ANSA, Kyodo and others.

Xinhua Director General Cai Mingzhao noted that it had been three years since the last World Media Summit in the Qatari capital of Doha and it was time to pick a venue for holding the next forum, given the crucial shifts facing the world’s media industry.

According to Cai Mingzhao, there is a growing number of participants in the media sphere who are not related to the industry, and the boundaries are being wiped away among various media, while the number of social networks users in China alone has hit 849 million.

Reporting by Indonesia Window