Pope blasts 'tragedy' of fake news (2)

(ANSA) - Vatican City, January 24 - Pope Francis has blasted the phenomenon of fake news in his message for World Communications Day on Wednesday. "The tragedy of disinformation is that it discredits others, presenting them as enemies, to the point of demonizing them and fomenting conflict," it read. "Fake news is a sign of intolerant and hypersensitive attitudes, and leads only to the spread of arrogance and hatred.
    That is the end result of untruth".
    The leader of the Catholic Church said no one should feel exempted from the duty of countering fake news. "This is no easy task, since disinformation is often based on deliberately evasive and subtly misleading rhetoric and at times the use of sophisticated psychological mechanisms," the message read. "Praiseworthy efforts are being made to create educational programmes aimed at helping people to interpret and assess information provided by the media, and teaching them to take an active part in unmasking falsehoods, rather than unwittingly contributing to the spread of disinformation. "Praiseworthy too are those institutional and legal initiatives aimed at developing regulations for curbing the phenomenon, to say nothing of the work being done by tech and media companies in coming up with new criteria for verifying the personal identities concealed behind millions of digital profiles".