UAE: Make real news more appealing than fake news, media experts say

It is necessary for news agencies to work with tech giants and feed off young people’s interests for journalism to continue to be the leader in setting benchmarks and making real news more appealing than fake news.

Discussing how media will look like in the future in a world dominated by digital content, news and cloud leaders agreed that media and AI are more connected than ever with people consuming most of their media information through their phones.

While some may speculate that typical journalism is fading away and stands no chance in front of video and AI generated content, there will always be a need for real journalism to set the benchmark for real news, as opposed to fake news which is shared 70% times more – as per a previous announcement by UAE officials.

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“Journalism will always survive, it just needs to figure out how?” said Michael Jabri-Pickett, Editor-in-Chief of Khaleej Times.

“If you do it properly, you will always be necessary because you need somebody to moderate content and you need somebody to come and say: this is real, and this isn’t, and if somebody is going to say something that is not real, you need to call them on it.”

He said newsrooms around the world should act as a ‘unified front’ and cooperate with tech giants to moderate content and tackle the spread of misinformation.

Another key for proper journalism to re-surface, is seeking young people’s opinions about emerging trends to shape credible content in an engaging way. Newspapers are often tagged as a medium for ‘older folks’, but that doesn’t have to be the case.

“If we want to remain young, we must prove to young people that we are appealing as well.”

Knowing that younger audiences prefer their content in video, and unlike older audiences who prefer a hard news angle, there are ways for news outlets to tell their stories in an attractive way, so they don’t feel compelled to turn away to other non-newsy sources for information.

“You have to hook them quickly – keep it short and straight to the point,” he said, like a news lead that consists of 230 words to lure people into reading further into the story.

“We can use new technologies to our advantage to appeal to younger audiences, but still maintain our journalistic practices.

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