Fake news, how is it possible in an age when most of us carry the greatest library ever invented around with us? Italian schools are working on a fix.
There are lots of ways you can identify fake news, you could, for example, follow President Trump on Twitter, and castigate all publications he describes as peddling lies to the bin.
Some might recommend the opposite approach.
But in Italy there is another fix in the making, school kids are to be taught how to identify fake news, they are being encouraged to reach out to experts to corroborate what they have read, run blogs of their own, identifying inaccurate news and spreading the word of its 'fakeness' to the world.
Laura Boldrini, the president of the Italian lower House of Parliament said: "Fake news drips drops of poison into our daily web diet and we end up infected without even realising it."
It does seem the motivation stems from political pressure.
Alessandro Campi, a professor of political science at Perugia University said: "I’d say that the Five Star Movement (that's the populist political movement in Italy which is soaring in opinion polls), believes more than any other political party in conspiracy theories."
So did man land on the moon, were the Pyramids of Egypt built by Martians, was President Kennedy really shot by Jason Bourne? Teach kids to question.
Facebook is behind the plan. Laura Bononcini, representing Facebook in Italy, Greece and Malta, said that “the programme is part of an international effort. Education and media literacy are a crucial part of our effort to curb the spread of false news, and collaboration with schools is pivotal.”
But the Italian initiative is surely right. As is Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia who is setting up a new wiki system for identifying fake news and presenting facts to counter lies.
Identifying fake news is not hard, in the age of smart phones it takes just a few minutes to check just about any claim.
But first of all, we need to want to know the truth.
Maybe AI has the fix, a voice reverberating across the room every time a debatable view or dubious 'fact' is enunciated by someone on the TV or radio, an AI system may interject by outlining the alternative view, or the evidence.
