Propaganda and inaccurate news has always existed but the mass dissemination of fake news through the internet is a new manifestation of an age old problem, a conference in Dublin has heard.
The Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjorn Jagland was speaking at a meeting of the European Broadcasting Union this morning.
He said the council and the EBU share the same challenges, including the threat to freedom of expression and media pluralism, the rise of fake news and hate speech, and finding solutions that uphold truth and democracy without stifling debate and dissent.
The issue of fake news, he said, cannot be solved by a blanket ban or catch all law.
It is not illegal to say things that are inaccurate and it is wrong to go down the road of state censorship, he said.
But Mr Thorbjorn said people must be given the skills to see through fake news when it reaches them.
Big media organisations must take action to weed out disinformation and news consumers can be empowered on telling fact from fiction – it is a matter of education, he said.
He said there is a need to teach media literacy at school and help young people understand that what they see at first glance cannot be taken at face value.
He also said that internet providers and social network companies are obliged to remove hate speech.
The President of Eurovision Americas said public service news providers needed to rethink everything except their values.
Bill Dunlop was speaking about a report on the challenges facing public service broadcasters in the current digital age.
He said: "Whether you're producing an edit for Facebook, a piece of youth content for an app or a video for YouTube, it must have a purpose and a standard worthy of a public service broadcaster.
"It must be intelligent and it must reflect multiple points of view: that is how, over the long term, public service media will continue to stand out from the mass of other online news providers."
