Weather forecaster has in his collection. Just a bit of seaweed. The seaweed is indicating something a lot milder early next week. Something to look forward to for those of you who do not like the cold. Tonight the chilly easterly wind. There is snow over the high ground. A cold night with temperatures hovering just above freezing in most places. Over the hills we will have some ice around four. Tomorrow, more of the same. Cold, windy and grey. Further rain, sleet and snow. High levels could be badly affected. Not much brightness. The best in the far north West Of Scotland. A chilly three, 4 degrees. Things do start to warm up, particularly through the early part of next week. In the sunshine for some of a hello. This is bbc news. The headlines. President trump says hes considering a brand new Executive Travel Order after his initial attempt was overturned by the federal courts. A group of conservative mps have called on the government to make the uk more welcoming for commonwealth citizens and make Visa Rules Fast tracked for visitors from the 52 nations. Campaigners led by The Labour Peer lord dubs have delivered a petition signed by 50,000 people to downing street, urging theresa may to allow more unaccompanied child refugees into britain. Labour has issued formal warning to members of its front bench team who disobeyed Jeremy Corbyns order to vote for brexit. The mps wont be sacked but they have been asked not to do it again. More news at the top of the hour. Now on bbc news, talking business. Hello from washington, dc. Im Michelle Fleury. Did false stories have an impact on the outcome of the recent us election . Ever since that question came up, fake news has become, well, front page news. So, what should be done . On this weeks talking business, we examine how fake news is spread and what, if anything, should be done to rein it in. Welcome to the programme. Im Michelle Fleury in washington, dc. From politics to the media to Technology Companies, lately a lot of people worked up about fake news for the back of the spreading of lies or half truths presented as news. The problem is made worse because there is money to be made in the fake news business. This is how it works. So, who is responsible for the boom, and the containment of fake news . Here to help me investigate, werejoined from San Francisco by a web and Technology Writer and pa rt time entrepreneur. In the studio with me are the director of the museum in washington, as well as a wikipedia editor for washington, dc. Gentlemen, thank you very muchjoining me. If i could start a question, andrew, to you. How should we be defining fake news . I talked about it as being about lies presented as news. Is that too narrow a definition . It is too broad a definition in many ways. One of the problems with the term fake news is it encompasses many different types of news sources, websites, you find. So, i think, one of the better pieces written about this, to try to break down the whole phenomenon of fake news into folks that might be intentionally creating news for profit, so we saw there were some operations out of macedonia that did this in the us election cycle. You have partisan sites, who have sites which are not prey were checked in terms of facts. A whole bunch of different sites that fall under this umbrella of fake news. Its important to understand there are different motivations for these. It is hard to paint everything as one fake news phenomenon. I see you looking there. Jeffrey. Do you agree with that . I do. I think were only very early in this News Ecosystem where there are lots of different entrance. That is great in many ways. A lot more people have their voices heard. A lot more news sources. But it also opens this up to the possibility of people deliberately polluting was sabotaging the news. I think thats a long term concern in many ways but its been brought about, been highlighted, in recent times because the speed and velocity of social media. I want to bring you in there. You heard about the speed and velocity of social media is what it has accelerated this. Do you agree with that . I do indeed. I think fake news, as andrew defined, or tried to define, is actually the right way to think about it. We have fake news coming out of places like macedonia, which is essentially no different from spam. The rest of it is essentially propaganda and now propaganda is happening at network scale. I think that is the reality of the News Ecosystem right now, that it works at a much faster pace and a much larger scale than it used to. So, it kind of blurs the boundaries between real and fake and real and unreal, and truths and half truths. Who are the gatekeepers . I think part of the new era is that there are no gatekeepers at the moment. It used to be only a generation ago that you would have water kronkyte, and a few other anchors, and few in the United States very well respected National Newspapers that would deem for people. This is likely to be true, this is likely not to be. Now, for all kinds of good reasons, those gatekeepers have been torn down and we have a much more vibrant and dynamic news system. In the early days of this new era, we dont have the gatekeepers. In many ways, its going to be up to the individual now. To bea to be a much more intentional news coiisuitiei to be a much more intentional News Consumer than in the past. Arent you letting off the platforms, the facebooks and googles of the world, a bit too easily . I think they have a role. I think they are now beginning to acknowledge their new role in this information ecosystem, that theyre just not pipes by which they distribute information and posts to people, but that they mediate, they edit, curated the news in a particular type of way. At the end of the day, i think that the Social Media Platforms can do a significant amount that it is really on the demand side. If consumers demand good quality news, the algorithms and the platforms are provided to them. One thing that the traditional gatekeepers have to do is to make themselves relevant in a new age of technology and social media. As was mentioned, things are happening faster on social media, theyre happening shorter. The most important thing is uncontextualised. These are tweets, these are instagram posts, they are facebook utterances and they are not 3000 5000 word pieces. In isolation, in little bits, in part of the internet. What you are seeing are some experiments, like the Washington Post for example, right after the election. It says we are providing a new plug in for the chrome browsers. So, whenever you look at a tweet from donald trump, were going to put a little fact checked right underneath it saying, what is the truth value of this . Not too many people will use this, obviously. How many people are using a chrome Desktop Browser and are installing the Washington Post plug in . Its kind of interesting they are experimenting with these types of things. We have also seen that google and facebook have realised that just being a platform, and just link sharing with no responsibility, is also not a great thing. They are almost what we call accidental or unintentional media organisations. Because they are sharing the news but they are not doing the Fact Checking orflagging of content in a way that we see as being effective. A lot of the moves we are seeing from facebook and google right now, annotating and flagging trying to get more information from the reader because readers are demanding that now. I slightly disagree with andrew. I do believe the new gatekeepers are the social media platform. They cannot deny that is their role. They have to make sure that nefarious information does not spread. They need to figure out the stuff coming out of places like macedonia, the for profit spam sites should be stopped right away they have the infrastructure to do that. The fact they did not do it tells me they dropped the bar. Even just to kind of say that we are looking into the fake news, i think it is a lot of lip service. In their universe, more attention to whatever people are doing, or reading on their platform, equals more profit. I want to talk about the decentralisation of news. From rolling news, two Technology Companies becoming big time media players. How much of a role has that played in what we have seen today . I think we see the abundance of news sites. In many ways this is the golden age of news. More people have access to more sites and more information than ever before, if they are willing to undertake the very mild search clause. If they just want to be passive and have things come at them, its a real problem. I agree that the Technology Companies have a role. I dont want teenagers in macedonia flooding our news system with false news. I dont want to assign too much authority to facebook and google. They are for profit companies. They are doing whats best for their shareholders. That is what they should do. But the algorithmically derived results they produce are not particularly transparent and no one elected them to become the gatekeepers for the News Ecosystem. I think they have a role. I dont think you can mitigate the responsibility that individuals have with all this access, were now going to have to Pay Attention to what we consume. Thank you all for now. Later in the programme, can algorithms help wipe out fake news . Algorithms help determine which stories take precedence over others on your Facebook News feed. Our Comedy Consultant has been taking a closer look. In this weeks talking point, he examines the role played by algorithms in fake news. Fake news. Youve probably seen it written more than you heard it said. Usually written by someone on facebook shouting virtually at someone they used to like. Now, sometimes people shout fake news in a facebook comment purely because they disagree with the previous facebook comment. But, real fake news, if you know what i mean, thats where a company, orjust two guys with a laptop, set up a website that looks like a plausible news website and churn out stories that looks sort of possible. How does that fake news and those made up stories get onto your Social Media Feeds . A former Vice President at intel here in ireland and something of a tech and Start Up Guru tells me its something to do with algorithms. The beauty of algorithms is they neither know, nor care, what is true or false. Its mathematics. Its looking for correlations. Likewise, in the news space, if there are News Articles which are being clicked on out there and people with interests like mine are looking at real news items, they are looking at false news items that they are looking at who knows what news items. As far as the algorithm is concerned, this is a high hit rate. For somebody like philip, so im going to present that to him. Cats, theyre just so funny. Wouldnt you think though that rational thinking human beings will do little bit of verification on the stories that they are served up on their news feeds . Turns out its not even a cat. The problem is, we dont do that verification. Were too happy to have our vices confirmed so when we see something plausible on our phones we just share it. So, controlling fake news is going to have to be done in a different way. Hello. Im the ceo of of fact matter. Fact matter is a google backed project for automated Fact Checking. Our mission is to solve misinformation in online content. Solving online misinformation sounds like a noble cause, but how are they going to do it . Were focusing on Sentence LevelFact Checking. This is identifying claims that appear in text and verifying those claims. Machine intelligence comes in using natural language processing, to understand effectively what is a claim. What are the sources that you could use to check that claim what that claim is about and the hardest part, which is linking that claim to a fact. It will be a Browser Extension which allows you to see highlighted Sentence Level claims about statistics and it will link them to sources that, for example, the world bank, it will enable them to verify those claims immediately. Fact checking, spoilsports. Our extension could basically look at a piece of content and say this is likely to be misleading because, overall, this piece of news contains ten, 15, 20 misleading claims. The only problem with this solution is it may not be able to tell the difference between fake news and when someone is just trying to be funny, which is a problem i face myself quite often. Touching on the role of algorithms in fake news for that you can see more of his short films on our website. Back here in washington, in the rapid and seemingly uncontrollable spread of fake news, modern technology as part of the problem. Could it also turn out to be part of the solution . Im joined again by our guests. Doctor geoffrey from the museum, professor andrew lee of wikipedia and the Technology Writer from San Francisco. Lets talk about. If i could talk about algorithms. Are we right to blame algorithms for the problem of fake news . You know, algorithms only do what we specified. They are just a set of instructions we have written. Hopefully got up with Machine Learning there are all types of things happening we may not know of. It is about the Machine Making Determinations without Human Eye Balls Determinations without Human Eyeballs double checking them or steering them. We had a problem recently where google was giving Search Results for, did the holocaust happen with some very unsavoury sites at the top of those rankings . Google has repeatedly over the years said, sorry, that is our algorithm. If you want to see Something Different at the top, theyre going to have to go on the internet and make it happen on the internet. Google did tweet the algorithm at the end of the day so holocaust the mars were not at the top of the Search Results. Im sympathetic to the companies. They have to recognises his very early oii. Have to recognises his very early on. Three or four macro years ago i do not think facebook was thinking, we are going to become the platform by which most millennial is get the iiews by which most millennial is get the news was that i do not think that was in their heads. It has happened at such a speed and has caused a significant change in demands facing the to respond. We also have to recognise these are companies unlike any we have ever seen in that they are truly global. The next million customers of facebook weather will probably be in south asia, africa and east asia. They have to be responsive to all of that but also. We rightly demand more of the companies. I am quite sympathetic. respectfully disagree with you. Facebook had specifically targeted the media, the news business. They replicated the idea of twitter because they knew that is how people keep coming back to the facebook platform. News is one of the most addictive things for people to come back to a platform or a service or a brand. They intentionally went ahead and targeted the news business. Between google and facebook, 85 of the Online Advertising are going to these two companies. These are not, babes in the woods. They are private equities. Private entities have responsibilities. It is notjust facebook. Facebook, google, twitter, microsoft, which owns the being said engine and other entities like them need to sit down and figure out what is the right answer. I dont think the individual should bear the burden of trying to make decisions on every single piece of information they access on facebook or any other service. I want to bring in andrew. Wikipedia was mentioned. You are keen to jump wikipedia was mentioned. You are keen tojump in. What is the role for wikipedia and the role free humans . Wikipedia has been around fori6 humans . Wikipedia has been around for 16 years when it first started in 2001. It was seen as an Odd Experiment on the side of the internet. You are not sure if you could trust it. It has been in the top ten most visited website in the world. Wikipedia has stayed at the top. There are debates of how much you should trust it that we have found that over the years it is still the go to place, including folks like google whom i knit for information. Every time you do a Google Search you will find references to wikipedia. Facebook and google are employing people who are learning from wikipedia lesson. When you read an article will see a warning or the neutrality of a section is disputed. We need morsels is to verify this. Wikipedia has said, this is the best we know of this topic. We could use better sourcing and better facts. This topic. We could use better sourcing and betterfacts. Facebook in germany is trying out this experiment of annotating and putting warnings around content. Not necessarily saying this is true or untrue but to give more guidance to the reader. What do you think of the idea of Crowd Sourcing . All of these things should be implied. This is so compensated and it is so early, frankly, in the new ecosystem that we should be testing all of these things out. On the supply side, i think the platforms should do more. I think the responsibil