Irish Examiner view: Checking facts on false allegations

It is essential to cast a critical eye over false allegations of fake news made by powerful individuals and organisations

Recognising false allegations of fake news is as important as spotting fake news itself.

It is always important to be able to spot so-called “fake news” from the real thing but it is even more essential to cast a critical eye over false allegations of fake news made by powerful individuals and organisations for their own ends.

During the presidency of Donald Trump, we were constantly bombarded with his allegations of “fake news” when reports hostile to him were made in the media. Now the Russians have adopted the term for a similar purpose.

Russia has said that a Ukrainian claim that it bombed a children’s hospital in Mariupol was “fake news” because the building was a former maternity hospital that had long been taken over by troops. This is despite the fact that the Russians are reported to have attacked three hospitals in all.

Branding it fake

A more worrying example of branding a credible account as “fake news” is the response on Twitter by a UN spokesperson to a story by Naomi O’Leary, Europe Correspondent with The Irish Times, in which she wrote that UN staff had been instructed by email not to use words like “war” or “invasion” when referring to the situation in Ukraine.

“Yes, it’s fake,” the UN spokesperson’s Twitter account wrote of her story. “It is simply not the case that staff have been instructed not to use words like ‘war’ or ‘invasion’ to describe the situation.”

In fact, her story was entirely accurate because, unlike the UN spokesperson, she had checked her facts.