Forum discusses future of news industry

Sohaila Ahmed, Staff Reporter

Dubai Press Club (DPC), in partnership with Facebook, organised the region’s first Facebook News Forum in Dubai on Wednesday. More than 200 journalists, content creators, publishers and other professionals in the media field took part in the full-day event to discuss the future of the news industry and the need to ensure a continuous flow of accurate and reliable information on social media platforms, including the methods being used to fight and reduce the spread of fake news.

The full-day event, which took place at Alserkal Avenue, was part of a series of initiatives held by Facebook under the Facebook Journalism project, which has been designed to support journalism and news literacy around the world.

Regional and global speakers participating in the Forum led engaging training sessions aimed at promoting quality journalism on the Facebook platform. The forum kicked off with a session with Jesper Doub, Director of News Partnerships EMEA, Facebook, during which he stressed that people should have access to great journalism on the platform and that Facebook continues to work on building a bridge with the media through partnerships. During the session, which was moderated by Mustafa Al Rawi, Assistant Editor-in-Chief at The National, Doub said the news industry is going through massive transformations which include changes in business approaches, and that Facebook is working to help news partners find their way on the platform.

Doub also spoke about Facebook’s commitment to fighting fake news through working with a network of up to 54 fact-checking partners who review and rate the accuracy of content on Facebook. He added that Facebook also removes around one million fake accounts every day on the platform using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in order to keep spam, fraud and hate speech off the platform.



In another session, titled ‘News Feed and Integrity’, Nick Wrenn, News Partnerships Lead, UK and Ireland, Facebook, discussed how Facebook ensures users are able to recognise misleading news through flagging and pushing down inaccurate content with the help of independent fact-checkers. He further noted that integrity of content became a major focus for Facebook in the last few years.