Hanoi (VNA) – Members of the Organisation of Asia-Pacific NewsAgencies (OANA) expressed concern over the spread of fake news and its negativeimpact on society, sharing measures to help news outlets and the public toconduct fact-checking on the occasion of the 44th OANA Executive Board Meetinghosted by the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) in Hanoi from April 18-20.

First Deputy Director General of Russia’sTASS news agency Mikhail Gusman stressed that it is time to use every advantageto develop mechanisms in the fight against fake news.

The first step will be forming close tiesamong news agencies, possibly in a traditional alliance like the OANA, hesuggested, stressing on the need to give a clear definition of “fake news”,along with legal arguments and regulations.

According to Gusman, the OANA is not only avenue for news agencies to share experience, but also to make importantdecisions affecting the stability of the global information space.

When TASS assumed the OANA Chairmanship, acode of professionalism ethics for OANA was issued with the support of theAustralian Associated Press (AAP), which dictates responsibility for thecorrectness of information, including news, photos, and videos, and bans thepublication of news that could promote the activities of terror groups.

Given the context that fake news isspreading and harming nations, the Bahrain News Agency (BNA) affirmed that itdoes not compromise in its quest for honest reporting of the multitude ofevents in the country and in the world.

As local, regional, and internationalevents require regular and prompt coverage in the news, the BNA assumes theresponsibility of contributing effectively to keeping the internationalcommunity well informed on events and conferences, as well as on contexts andoutcomes.

The agency shared its experience in keepingto the golden rule of not falling for fake news stories, no matter how genuinethey are made to look or sound.

It also has created win-win situations toexchange credible news with other agencies in the Middle East, Asia, andEurope, and signed agreements with some universities and research centres inorder to boost chances of dealing with only factual news and analyses.

The BNA has also trained its staff on thebest practices to verify all news that it receives via email, fax, phone calls,and messages or that its monitoring team spots on websites.

Meanwhile, the Republic of Korea (RoK)’sYonhap news agency shared that the country’s media outlets are strengtheningtheir fact-checking mechanisms to prevent damage from spreading fake news andto allow the readers to decide what the facts are when there are conflictingversions of stories.

Yonhap, the RoK’s premier newswire service,set up a fact-checking committee and has since made it a permanent team in aneffort to contribute to a virtuous cycle in the local media market and toprovide news that is fast, precise, and balanced.

Yonhap’s fact-check team was officiallylaunched in April 2018 as part of the newsroom. Foreign correspondents andreporters can pitch in by writing articles tagged with “fact check” to highlightissues that require the separation of facts from untruths. The aim is not tolimit fact-checking to specific sections or issues.

Fact-checking has now become one of the most important concerns for Koreanmedia. Broadcasters and newspapers have separate teams of people focuseddirectly on this issue.

Yonhap’s fact-checking team filed 140 articlesover the one-year period following its launch, identifying the facts in thecoverage of politics, business, society, culture, science, and other areas ofnews. To deal with fake news on YouTube, Yonhap launched a video fact-checkservice named “Weekly Fact Check” on March 8 this year, it said. –VNA