Causes for the loss of trust in the practices of the press and strategies for its restoration in a context of uncertainty

Starting from the electoral campaign for the presidency of the USA in 2016, with the heyday of the concept of “post-truth” and fake news, the press, which had been adapting with effort to the digital age, suffered a crisis. The purpose of this paper is to describe how the post-truth concept and the proliferation of false news caused a notable loss of cre­dibility in the journalistic practices. We offer different types of fake news and some specific strategies to detect them. The viralization by social media finds journalists poorly tra­ined to use their basic ethical principles: check their sources and compare them. The easiness of unverified information’s posts triggers the development of fact-checking organiza­tions; and the press itself, the academy and social media, try to control the truth of the published facts. To conclude, among other strategies, it is of utter urgency to start tea­ching once again the basis of journalistic ethics in Journalism Schools in order to solve the trust issue in press practices.