Seek traditional media for true news: Forum

ASTANA, Kazakhstan: The public should go back to traditional news media sources if they want to get accurate news, the former press chief of a British Prime Minister told an international media forum here.
Giles Kenningham, who was head of political press for David Cameron, said the online social media was teeming with fake news, and one of the top social networking services was the biggest culprit of fake news.
Kenningham was a speaker at a panel session on the topic of "Can Truth Prevail?" at the 14th Eurasian Media Forum hosted by the Kazakhstan government.
Kenningham, who now runs Trafalgar Strategy, a strategic communications consultancy, said: "we live in a sound-bite culture where less people buy papers and watch television by appointment."
He said fake news could be eliminated if all online social media were subjected to stringent checks and there was a third party group which could do the checking on the information.

However, Kenningham pointed out that fake news could easily be countered if all parties including the governments were more transparent in their activities as this would enhance the trust of the people.
He added that the people should also be taught not to rely on one source of information alone.
Another panellist, Kazakhstan Information and Communication Minister Dauren Abayev, said the social media was brimming with millions of news and information every minute and it would not be easy to counter fake news as a lot of time was needed to verify even one unconfirmed news.
However, the minister said, the truth would prevail when the people approached the information with common sense.
He pointed out that one or two fake news would not affect the people much but what would be alarming was when certain people such as 'strong leaders' manipulated the social media to spread fake news for their benefit.

Canada's Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC) president Catherine Cano said the media needed to connect with the audience or they would run away looking for alternative media.
She said the people now were more interested in getting the news that they wanted to know and not the ones provided by the normal media.
Cano said that to keep their audience intact, the media should give context in their news coverage which was currently missing, adding that one way to engage their audience was by doing in-depth reporting.
Another speaker, UK TV producer Shahida Tulaganova, said today's TV news reporting was too short as it could not give a complete picture of an event.
She pointed out that what was always missing from the TV video clips were the "voice" of the victims and this made the reports inadequate to the audience who naturally will look for another source of information to know the other side of the story. — Bernama