Indonesian news portal Tempo Inti Media chief executive officer Bambang Harymurti said due to the “fake news” phenomenon in this post-truth era, the council should be responsible for managing and investigating complaints from readers or members of the public and also recommend action to be taken.
He further said it was also important to have experts in journalism who could supervise journalists in their work.
“Professional journalists not only have to be technically competent and understand the do’s and don’ts but also need to be supervised. They have to differentiate between honest mistakes and mistakes that are intentional.
“We call it a protocol or code of etiquette that we have agreed upon and it should be followed, especially in terms of freedom of expression,” he told Bernama on the sidelines of the Publish Asia 2017 Conference here today.
Bambang, who is also the group editor-in-chief of Tempo Inti Media, said in this way, journalists would earn more respect and help to maintain their organisation’s reputation.
Last night, Prime Minister Najib Razak, in addressing the conference, said the trend for fake news and false reporting was not confined to the Malaysian social media.
Meanwhile, Ng Hiu-tung, the founder of the FactWire, a non-profit news agency in Hong Kong, said journalists nowadays must put in greater effort into their work and verify sources of information to debunk fake news.