‘Fake news’ will not be tackled without financial penalties

The phenomenon of ‘fake news’ will not be tackled without social media and tech companies taking responsibility or without financial penalties, the head of journalism at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) has said.

Kate Shanahan was speaking during a panel discussion on fake news hosted by the RTÉ Audience Council at Trinity College, Dublin on Thursday evening.

The event explored fake news as a key challenge facing the media industry and consumers, as well as the tech giants.

Asked whether she believed things would not change without regulation, Ms Shanahan said she believed things would not change without “responsibility on the part of the tech giants” because they had not taken the responsibility they needed to take.

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“They have grown at exponential levels that they cannot control and they can’t develop the algorithms to control what’s going on out there. They’re not going to take the responsibility unless there’s a financial fine of some sort. Something is going to have to happen to them,” she said.

From the audience, Thomas Kelly, who previously worked with The Times and The Sunday Times, said so much of news from mainstream media was "dreadful".

“The media has done this to itself. They’ve left themselves open to accusations of bias, not being trusted.”

Also from the audience, Annette Clancy, a lecturer at the UCD College of Business said the role journalists had was as a “guiding hand” and she believed that role had been set aside.

“We are drowning in noise, we are drowning in information and it’s simply too easy now to talk to the people who have the same point of view as you do. We are now raising a generation of kids who cannot have a conversation with people of a different perspective,” she said.

“Fake news isn’t the problem, the platform isn’t the problem and social media isn’t the problem; it’s actually how do we encourage people to have a conversation with people who think something completely different from them and walk away from it knowing we both had an interesting conversation and nobody is going to die as a result of it.”

The panel also included Fionnan Sheahan, editor of the Irish Independent; Síle Lane of Sense About Science; Áine Kerr of Nevalabs; Dr Eugenia Siapera from DCU's school of communications; Dr Linda Kiernan, lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin; Declan McBennett, managing editor RTÉ News Live and Ian Power, executive director of Spunout.ie. The discussion was chaired by broadcaster Bryan Dobson.

Mr Dobson asked Mr Sheahan whether he was concerned about what was happening in INM - in relation to the alleged data breach involving the transfer of information from the company to third parties - was damaging trust in the news operation.

“Anything at all that is going to undermine or cause any question in people’s minds about the independence, the autonomy, the authority or the integrity of that is going to very much concern me as an editor,” Mr Sheahan said.

“What we have done over recent weeks is show that we will cover this story as we would if it was a story in RTÉ, if it was a story involving any large-scale company. And it’s often very difficult to cover a story that is within the confines of your own building [WHERE)]the events are actually happening around you.

“But we have just taken the firm view, it is our role, it is our duty, it is our responsibility to report on this, to hold people to account and to keep the public informed, because that’s our number one role as much on this story as it is on any other.”

The RTÉ Audience Council is a voluntary body of 15 members which provides a voice for consumers of RTÉ media output. It is appointed by the board of RTÉ.