Every day, millions of people wake up to a flood of messages, headlines, images, and videos that arrive through their phones before there is time to ask a simple question: is this true? In a year as important as 2024, when Mexicans are preparing to make decisions that will shape the next six years of their country, that question becomes urgent. It was with this sense of urgency that Channel 44, the public broadcaster of the Universidad de Guadalajara, began its thirteenth anniversary celebrations, not with a party, but with a conversation about one of the most serious problems of our time: disinformation. The occasion was the Ibero-American Chair against Disinformation, held at the Biblioteca Pública del Estado de Jalisco Juan José Arreola. The keynote address, “Fact-checking in the digital age,” was delivered by Elodie Martínez, a journalist from Agence France-Presse, one of the world’s most respected news agencies. Her presence was a reminder that the fight against false information is not a niche concern, but a central challenge for journalism and democracy. Martínez warned that the public is inundated with publications and messages that cannot be verified by ordinary people, who have not been trained to process and discern truth from falsehood. This is not a failure of individual intelligence, but a structural condition of the digital age, in which falsehoods often travel faster than facts and are designed to look exactly like the truth. At such moments, the difference between a fact and a rumor can be the difference between hope and fear, between unity and chaos. The event made clear that Channel 44’s anniversary is not only about celebrating survival in a difficult media landscape, but about reaffirming a public-service mission: to provide information that people can trust, especially at moments when the future of a country hangs in the balance.
Martínez did not sugarcoat the scale of the challenge. She reminded the audience that this year is decisive for Mexico in terms of elections and the decisions Mexicans will make for the next six years. Traditional media outlets, she said, have lost some ground in the media landscape, and they must regain that ground so that the public returns to them for verified and accurate information. This is not an argument against social media or digital platforms. Martínez acknowledged that these spaces can be good and complementary, offering voices and perspectives that traditional media sometimes ignore. But she also warned that they sometimes offer unverified content that seeks to convey a message with a specific intention. That intention may be political, commercial, ideological, or simply malicious. The consequence is that citizens are asked to make important decisions based on information that was never checked, never sourced, and never held accountable. Martínez spoke about the serious and violent repercussions that disinformation can have in politics. It can destabilize a country. It can generate less participation at the polls, because people become confused or cynical. It can lead to loss of confidence in the electoral system and to accusations of fraud and corruption, even when there is no evidence to support them. She reminded the audience that more than two billion voters around the world were going to the polls this year, which makes the need for digital verification tools more urgent than ever. Journalists and future journalists, she said, must learn these tools and complement traditional knowledge. The credibility of the press is at stake. Media outlets must move faster and faster, but they do not always have the resources to verify information before publishing it. Martínez insisted that they should always be careful about that, because once credibility is lost, it is very difficult to regain. Her words were not a lecture to journalists alone; they were a warning to everyone who consumes news. In a democracy, information is a form of power, and when that power is corrupted, the whole system suffers.
Beyond the general warnings, Martínez offered a clear picture of what disinformation actually is and how it operates. Disinformation, she explained, is content that disguises itself as information, but is not. It can be shared with bad intentions or without them, which makes it even more slippery. It has multiple faces and circulates at an unprecedented speed. Its most favorable contexts are elections, migration, social crises, economic crises, health crises, wars, political conflicts, and climatic and natural disasters. In other words, it thrives exactly when people are most anxious, most vulnerable, and most in need of reliable guidance. It is not only present at the political level. It also appears in matters of gender, sports, the environment, science, and history. No area of human life is immune. In the digital age, Martínez said, information must be verified impartially, transparently, and from reliable sources. She also addressed the new player in this landscape: artificial intelligence. Since AI was released to the public just over a year ago, there has been a rapid evolution in the ability to detect false information, but also in the ability to create it. This makes extra caution essential. When you see a video or hear an audio, the first thing you should do is be suspicious and try to verify. Go to the source. Look for an official message. The problem with artificial intelligence, she noted, is that it has become global. A manipulated video made in one country can circulate in another within minutes, and by the time it is debunked, it may have already shaped opinions, influenced votes, or incited anger. The spread of false information is not always a grand conspiracy; sometimes it is just carelessness, amplified by algorithms. The human mind is not naturally equipped to question everything it sees; we tend to trust what looks real. That is why the discipline of verification must be learned and practiced, not only by professionals but by everyone.
One of the most empowering ideas Martínez offered was that verification is both a right and a duty of the public. It is a right because people deserve to know the truth and to have the tools to recognize it. It is a duty because the public contributes to the circulation of information by sharing posts, and therefore shares responsibility for what circulates. She argued that everyone should take on the role of fact-checker, because otherwise journalists will not be able to cope with the avalanche of misinformation. This is a profound shift in how we think about media literacy. It is no longer enough to be a passive consumer of news, waiting for someone else to sort out what is true. In a world where every user is also a distributor, every user must also be a verifier. This does not mean that everyone needs to become a professional journalist. It means learning to pause before sharing, to ask where a piece of information comes from, to check whether it has been confirmed by reliable sources, and to admit when we are not sure. Learning to verify is like learning to read: it changes the way you see everything. Martínez shared that AFP offers various free courses on the subject through its website, and she gave the address so that people could find them. She also described the infrastructure behind this work: AFP has a network of 2,500 professionals in 151 countries and is the world’s largest network of verifiers, with more than 140 verification services operating in 26 languages and more than 85 countries. These numbers are impressive, but they also reveal the scale of the problem. If the world’s largest verification network cannot stop the avalanche alone, then ordinary citizens must become allies in the effort. The idea is not to make everyone paranoid, but to make everyone more thoughtful. A society of fact-checkers would be a society in which lies have a shorter life, in which rumors are questioned, and in which public debate is based on something firmer than emotion and manipulation.
The concern expressed by Martínez was echoed by Dr. Gabriel Torres Espinoza, Director General of the University System of Radio, Television and Cinematography. He spoke about the importance of combating an evil that supplants the profession of journalists. In today’s media environment, he observed, an influencer is often confused with a journalist, and half-truths are presented as complete stories. This confusion has a negative impact on public life. Torres Espinoza recalled the era of lockdown during the pandemic, when misinformation played a complex and damaging role. It was one of the biggest problems for governments and health authorities around the world. They had to fight not only a virus, but also a flood of unverified information that influenced the situation through pseudo-journalists and self-appointed doctors who recommended things that did not solve the problem and further complicated the management of the pandemic. The memory of that period is still fresh, and it shows that disinformation is not a theoretical issue. It can cost lives. Torres Espinoza said that this phenomenon also affects the economy, culture, education, and democracies, because it undermines the right to political participation and reasoned voting by sowing confusion. When people cannot agree on basic facts, they cannot deliberate together. When they are constantly told that everything is fake, they lose the ability to trust anything. That loss of trust is dangerous. It opens the door to authoritarianism, to scapegoating, and to the breakdown of social solidarity. His words reminded the audience that the fight against disinformation is not a matter of professional pride for journalists. It is a matter of protecting the conditions that make democracy possible. The event, therefore, was not merely an academic exercise. It was a call to defend the common space in which citizens can speak to one another, disagree without violence, and make decisions together.
Journalist Celia Niño, gender editor for Channel 44, added another layer to the conversation. She commented that the course includes workshops on the subject and will be broadcast in 12 Ibero-American countries through 21 media outlets. This regional dimension is important, because disinformation does not respect borders, and neither should the response to it. Niño also emphasized the importance of practicing quality journalism in times of information overload and at a pace that is not necessarily compatible with reflection and verification. Her words were a reminder that the problem is not only malicious falsehoods, but also the structural pressure on journalists to publish quickly, to generate clicks, and to keep up with an endless news cycle. Quality journalism requires time, patience, and resources. It requires editors who are willing to say no to a story that is not ready, and audiences who are willing to wait for a story that is right. As Channel 44 celebrates thirteen years on the air, it is doing so by betting on that kind of journalism. The Ibero-American Chair against Disinformation is not a one-time event; it is part of a broader commitment to public service, to education, and to the values of the Universidad de Guadalajara. The university’s motto, “Piensa y Trabaja” — Think and Work — was present in the spirit of the gathering. This year also marks thirty years of autonomy for the university and its network organization, a milestone that gives the event even deeper meaning. The celebration of Channel 44’s anniversary, held in Guadalajara, Jalisco, on January 31, 2024, was not just a commemoration of the past. It was an investment in the future, an invitation for journalists, students, and citizens to take on the role of fact-checkers, to defend the truth, and to build a public conversation worthy of the democracy that so many people fought to achieve. The gathering was documented by Laura Sepúlveda Velázquez and photographer Adriana González, but its meaning belongs to everyone who left the library with a renewed sense of purpose. In the end, the message of the event was simple and profound: information is too important to be left to chance, and truth is too precious to be abandoned.