Fake news damages public trust in news media.
Fake news undermines public confidence in our democratic discourse.
Fake news exacerbates economic pressures facing quality news organisations.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, fake news highlights issues of responsibility and regulation in our fast-evolving media ecosystem.
Excerpted from a speech by Lionel Barner, editor of the Financial Times, that is worth reading in full. Bonus: Octavius Caesar.
On a tangentially related note, I’ve been thinking about and collecting examples of clickbait journalism — which, along with fake news, is metastasizing into a major problem for a media already shorn of credibility. My growing collection includes annotated examples from various media houses (all of which I’ll bring together into a post one day soon). Here is the example I picked to annotate today — see the comments appended to the highlights, and the summary story right at the end.
Smoke Signals 
You are making a real difference; please keep it up. One small step at a time!!
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-mistrust-of-science
Thanks much for the links. A reader wrote in a couple of days ago to suggest that a periodic compilation of lists of stories worth reading, with comments, might be useful. Was planning to do one every Sunday, will add this to the first iteration.
Outstanding work Prem! The annotated example is brilliantly done! On a related note, wanted to share a speech by Atul Gawande to the graduating class of Caltech (2016), where he exhorts young scientists to become more aware of “pseudoscience” that has its vested interest groups; some of your readers might enjoy relating to the analogies…
The sad part is, it is literally Journalism 101. This is what they teach you first — to read a story and separate out fact from adjective and hyperbole and over-reach.