When was the last time a piece of journalism genuinely changed your mind about something?

Not just confirm what you already thought or made you nod along. Actually shifted your opinion.

It's a harder question than it sounds. And it gets to the heart of something that a group of journalists, fact-checkers, lawyers and editors were wrestling with at a roundtable on information integrity at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia last week. Underneath all the challenges, there was a shared conviction: our work matters, we just need to get a lot better at explaining why.

Let's start with a story that stopped the room. A fact-checker working in the Middle East described how hard it was to verify information coming out of Gaza without adequate resources or support. So they built a fact-checking bot where people could send in a claim - a rumour, a video, a statistic - and get a verified response. Simple, direct, and useful.

But it wasn't all about user-generated content. Along with unverified accounts and videos, people were sending in news articles because they didn't trust what the media was telling them anymore.

Think about that. The fact-checkers weren't just being asked to hold politicians or governments to account. They were being asked to hold journalists to account. That's not a criticism of any individual reporter but a signal about where trust in the profession currently stands and we'd be foolish to ignore that.

Community as a solution (and a problem)

Misinformation doesn't spread only because of bad actors. It spreads because ordinary, well-meaning people don't have the tools or skills to verify what lands in their feed before they pass it on. The media industry has a role to play in closing this gap.

Working with schools, universities and community groups to build basic verification habits can foster an audience that's equipped to engage with journalism critically and confidently. Communities that can spot a dodgy claim are communities that are harder to manipulate. That has to be worth investing in.

Checking the facts just got three times harder

If you thought verification was already a challenge, AI has added a whole new layer of complexity. 

It used to be: Is this claim true? One question.

Then: Is this claim true, and is the source reliable? Two questions.