TODAY the Dorset Echo joins forces with local and regional titles across the UK to launch a campaign to fight fake news.

As one of the most significant national elections in a generation edges closer, the need for independent local newspapers and their websites to report and explain the issues in a neutral, honest and balanced way is essential.

Dorset Echo Editor Diarmuid MacDonagh said: “Fake news takes many forms and operates at several levels.

“At its most extreme and democratically destructive, it comprises deliberately and maliciously contrived statements which are cynically distributed in the guise of real news with the aim of deceiving for political or financial gain.

“More frequently, it is an unsubstantiated rumour indiscriminately posted on social media sites which rapidly gains credence, to the distress of those features in it and the alarm of all who read it.

“Repetition through ‘shares’ and ‘likes’ adds an undeserved authority. Comment, unlabelled as such, masquerades as truth; satire is confused with reality.”

In the past 12 months there has barely been a global event - from the election of the President of the United States to an incident involving a gunman at a Washington pizzeria - that has not been infected by the suggestion that entirely fabricated information designed to deceive had been circulated indiscriminately via social media.

‘Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth’, is a law of propaganda often attributed to the Nazi Joseph Goebbels.

It is little surprise that major businesses - whose role is critical to jobs and the economic success on which we all depend - are increasingly shunning digital sites that have placed their advertisements alongside extremist and offensive material.

“That would never happen within our print and digital pages,” said Mr MacDonagh. “When you advertise your business with us, you are sharing in the family values that underpin everything we do.

“We are uniquely placed to ensure that our newspapers and websites enhance and magnify your values.

“Your advertisements will appear alongside content that meets the very high standards to which our profession is committed.”

The Fighting Fake News campaign will run throughout Local Newspaper Week, May 15-21, which will see the local newspaper industry come together to celebrate its campaigning achievements.