Professional journalists are critical in the sifting of truth from fiction

Truthful news and information are what the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University stands for, whether it be in journalism, public relations or advertising.

This is increasingly important as faulty information has become available to more people than ever before. Stories with no basis in truth are coming from unreliable sources and have the potential to reach hundreds of millions of people and influence lives, elections, economies and more. There is as much fake news as actual news online, and people are quick to believe anything that looks like news. It tricks the educated, as well as the less informed. 

Efforts are being made to increase media literacy and battle fake news. Facebook, for example, has recently retreated from identifying itself as a news source, putting more emphasis on family and friends posts in an effort to help distinguish fact from fiction. Locally, the Greenlee Summit at Iowa State University on April 6 will explore how fake news and social media are impacting media organizations as well as society. By bringing together industry professionals and scholars for a day, we will help address our core business of truth-telling and freedom of expression, as well as recognize the effort of those professionals at the forefront. Legacy media practitioners and journalism and communication educators in the business of truth-telling must prevail.

We require factual information as citizens and democratic societies. Researchers indicate professional journalists and media practitioners are critical in the sifting of truth from fiction. Fraudulent news sites say strange things online but look legitimate, and professionals rather than citizens are often better equipped to spot fake news and keep it from spreading. Nevertheless, everyone needs to beware of stories with outrageous headlines from amateurish websites with odd domain names or extensions.

Most important, we all must consult a range of sources, especially on information that seems too good, amazing or odd to be true. 

Angela Powers is the director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Iowa State University.