It was a crisp late-September morning in Moscow, and the city was hosting a gathering that felt less like a routine conference and more like a kind of digital battlefield briefing. The event, called “Dialogue about Fakes 4.0,” had drawn journalists, media executives, and fact-checkers from around the world, all of them wrestling with a problem that has come to define our age: the relentless, swirling tide of fake news and misinformation. Among those taking the stage was Mohammad Al-Mannae, the acting director general of the Kuwait News Agency, better known by its acronym KUNA. He wasn’t there to deliver a slick corporate speech or to tick a diplomatic box. He was there to speak plainly about something that keeps him up at night—the simple, stubborn fact that too many people today no longer know what to believe. As he stood before the international audience, Al-Mannae described how misinformation has grown into an immense, almost monstrous challenge, one that quietly but powerfully blocks ordinary people from reaching reputable, honest journalism. It’s not just a technical problem or a political talking point; it’s a daily obstacle that erodes trust, confuses public debate, and leaves people feeling lost in a fog of conflicting claims. In that context, he argued, the true anchor of journalism—the thing that holds it all together—is credibility. Without credibility, a news report is just noise. With it, a news report becomes a public service, a reliable map through a chaotic world. And that, he suggested, is what the forum was really about: not just how to fight bad information, but how to protect and restore the good, trustworthy kind.
Al-Mannae went on to talk about the delicate, often agonizing tightrope that modern journalists have to walk every single day. On one side, there is the relentless hunger for speed. News breaks, social media explodes, and audiences expect updates within seconds. On the other side, there is the quiet, demanding discipline of accuracy. Getting it right takes time—time to verify sources, cross-check details, and consult the right experts. The tension between these two pressures has only sharpened as rapid technologies have transformed the news industry, making it possible to publish in an instant but also making it dangerously easy to publish something wrong. Al-Mannae called for a careful balance between the two, not as a lofty ideal but as a practical, daily necessity. He wasn’t asking for slow journalism or for endless delays; he was asking for a mindset where speed never becomes an excuse for carelessness. In a world where a single inaccurate headline can travel around the globe before anyone has a chance to correct it, the stakes are enormous. The public’s access to reputable reporting depends on journalists being willing to pause, to think, to check, and then to publish with confidence. That balance, he suggested, is the difference between journalism that informs and journalism that simply adds to the confusion. It’s a hard balance to maintain, especially when algorithms reward outrage and haste, but it is precisely the balance that separates the professionals from the purveyors of noise.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of his message involved the shiny new tool that has everyone talking: artificial intelligence. Al-Mannae acknowledged the promise of AI with the calm, measured tone of someone who has seen technologies come and go. He noted that AI can be a powerful ally for journalists—helping them speed up news production, sift through mountains of data, spot patterns, and translate complex information into clear stories. Machine learning can assist with research, transcription, and even the initial drafting of reports. But, he warned, such assistance must never come at the expense of reliability and credibility. There is a temptation to hand too much over to machines, to trust the algorithm because it seems smart and fast. Yet algorithms are not infallible; they can amplify bias, fabricate details, or present falsehoods with the confident polish of truth. Al-Mannae’s advice was essentially a plea for human judgment. Let AI be a helper, not a replacement. Let it make the work easier, but never let it make the decisions about what is true. The moment a newsroom outsources its conscience to software, it loses the very thing that makes journalism valuable: the ability to stand behind a story and say, “We verified this, we understand it, and we are confident it is true.” That kind of accountability cannot be coded into a machine. It has to be lived by the people who produce the news. For Al-Mannae, AI is simply another tool in the toolbox—a powerful one, but one that requires discipline and a clear sense of purpose.
Turning to concrete action, Al-Mannae shared what KUNA has been doing to push back against the tide of falsehoods. In October of 2024, the Kuwait News Agency launched an observatory—a dedicated unit designed specifically to combat fake news and misinformation. He described it as a shield against fake information and a platform for hoax detection. The image is a good one: not just a defensive wall, but a kind of early-warning system that scans the digital horizon for misleading content, debunks it, and gives the public a clearer sense of what is real. This observatory is more than a website or a team of fact-checkers; it is an institutional commitment to truth, a signal that KUNA takes seriously its responsibility to the public. It also represents something of a model for other news agencies, especially in a region where rumors can spread especially quickly and with serious consequences. Al-Mannae’s description made clear that the observatory doesn’t just react to false stories; it actively works to prevent them from gaining traction, offering audiences a reliable source they can consult when something feels off. It is, in many ways, a return to the original purpose of journalism—being the honest broker of information, the one institution people can trust when they need to know what’s actually going on. The launch of the observatory was a milestone, but Al-Mannae was careful not to present it as a cure-all. Instead, he saw it as one important step in a much larger, ongoing struggle.
That struggle, he stressed, cannot be won by any single news agency, country, or journalist working alone. Misinformation is a global problem, and it demands a global response. Al-Mannae called for ratcheting up international cooperation and know-how exchange among news agencies around the world. He pointed to the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies, known by its acronym OANA, as a “professional framework” through which that cooperation can and should proceed. But behind the formal name lay a simpler, more human idea: none of us are as strong as all of us. When a hoax starts in one country and travels to another, the only way to stop it is for journalists to share what they know, to warn each other, and to work together on verification. This is not just a matter of professional courtesy; it is a matter of collective survival. A lie that goes unchallenged in one place can quickly become a belief that influences elections, public health, and social harmony elsewhere. By working through organizations like OANA, news agencies can build a shared toolkit of digital verification methods, AI safeguards, and professional development practices. They can learn from each other’s mistakes and successes, and they can create a network of trust that spans borders. Al-Mannae’s emphasis on cooperation was refreshingly clear-eyed. He wasn’t imagining some utopian world where all conflicts disappear; he was simply making the practical point that the problems journalists face today are too big, too fast-moving, and too interconnected for anyone to solve alone.
In the end, Al-Mannae’s remarks came back to a single, guiding principle: protecting the truth is a professional obligation. It is not just a nice-to-have, not just a mission statement, but a duty that every journalist and every news organization must carry. The growth of the digital industry has brought us incredible gifts—instant communication, global reach, and tools that would have seemed like magic to previous generations—but it has also brought serious challenges. Misinformation spreads faster than ever, public trust is fragile, and the pressure to be first often conflicts with the need to be right. Al-Mannae suggested that bolstering cooperation in key areas like digital verification, AI literacy, and professional training is essential to keeping these hardships at bay. But above all, he reminded his audience that journalism’s core purpose has not changed. It is still about truth. It is still about serving the public with honesty and care. And it is still about the deep, unglamorous work of checking the facts, questioning assumptions, and telling the stories that need to be told. Sitting in that Moscow forum, listening to Al-Mannae, one could almost believe that the battle against fake news, though far from won, can at least be fought with courage and clarity. It is a fight for credibility, for balance, for human judgment, and for international solidarity. And it is a fight that every journalist, from the newsroom in Kuwait to the farthest corner of the globe, is called to join—not out of self-interest, but out of obligation to the truth.