Respondents of leading news media in Austria, among them public service broadcaster ORF, recognised the potential harm caused by misinformation on digital platforms, but trusted their journalistic skills to identify fake news. They all applied the basic journalistic principle of “check, re-check, double-check” to all stories and believed that fake news could be identified this way. When in doubt, leading news media houses trusted credible sources, such as news agencies, and hoped that these business-to-business services applied strict verification procedures. None of the news media in our sample, including even ORF, collaborated with external fact-checking institutions or ran an in-house verification department. Overall, respondents confirmed that fake news and deep fakes were not an urgent and pressing problem in Austria at the present time, making investments in verification unjustified as yet.
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