STUDENTS quizzed a panel of experts on the importance of good journalism in the ‘fake news’ era.

The panel of Worcester News editor Michael Purton, Reuters International journalist Tom Finn and ethics expert Professor Michael Frost spoke to students at the University of Worcester.

 Mr Finn, who was recently based in Qatar, explained the importance of providing eyewitness accounts. While in Yemen covering the Arab Spring, he exposed a bloody massacre which he verified by visiting the scene, after it had been described in online stories as faked by people covering themselves in tomato ketchup.  He said: “Technology makes fake news hard to combat. It takes half an hour to write a fake story, half an hour to circulate it, but weeks for a journalist to correct it.”

Mr Purton said trained reporters worked tirelessly to be accurate because otherwise they would lose credibility with their readers.

 Prof Frost, chair of the National Union of Journalists’ Ethics Committee, gave evidence at the Leveson inquiry into media standards, and said fake news was often seen as more entertaining than real stories, with Mr Purton saying this made it even more important that journalists make factual articles entertaining.

 The panel was held just a few days after the publication of scientific research showing ‘fake news’ was 70 per cent more likely to be retweeted than true stories.

 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology research tracked 126,000 Twitter cascades and found the fake stories were spread faster as audiences were ‘intrigued by their novelty’.

 Panel organiser and chair, Claire Wolfe, Principal Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Worcester, said: “Teaching how to be a responsible journalist is a core element of our course and this event intrigued and inspired our students.”