Fact checking and controlling minds

Pooneh delivering her speech at the WJC2022

Speech delivered by Pooneh Nedai, Editor in chief of Shokaran magazine, Iran, at the World Journalists Conference (WJC2022)

“Fact checking or finding reliable sources in journalism is a main column for producing valuable news or report. Nowadays that fake news has filled our life more than before, every media has responsibility for fact checking before publishing the content. In fact, in the new media era which contains professional media and social media, lots of unreliable contents are published in any second.

In the case of social media, ordinary people define “citizen reporter” role for themselves and they publish contents based on entertainment or surprising subjects. Citizen reporters usually don’t have special education in the case of fact checking but they have important role for revealing sensitive subjects to draw attention of the public opinion and governments at the same time the influencers can be used by professionals to lead public opinion into the planned area.

In the case of professional media, the idea of fact checking has been related to the power and money in all over the history. The policy of producing and publishing the right news is influenced by media, people and governments. I do not want to point the crisis of fact checking just with politics but I believe it is related to all.

The human society and its disasters are a production of all people. When some media don’t try to check the facts or hide the reality, there is some strong reason that its roots goes to public consciousness. I am aware that my sentences are closed to philosophy and anthropology, but when we look at the origin of the crisis of fact checking in media, it seems that there is no way other than flash backing to the hidden desires of human which is greed. Human wants to control the situation to feed his greed to gain power and money.

So if we flash back to the history of fact checking in journalism, we find out lots of fake news which published in order to guide public opinion to the desires target.

Now that we live in the pluralism world, we might be able to find solutions for producing the right news in the self-regulatory of each media. Any media which seeks its value has to find out new solutions to produce fact based news.

In the late pandemic situation, we are witnesses of floating human beings in fake news. The truth is not clear for us yet, because the system of power doesn’t try to clear the mind of people. We journalists have the responsibility to check the fact of every word we publish.”