It went largely unnoticed last week, but one of the leaders in the "alt-right" movement owned up to spreading "fake news."

Alex Jones of Infowars apologized to James Alefantis, the owner of the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. Alefantis' place gained national attention last autumn after Jones and countless other internet-based sources spread the false story that Hillary Clinton and other Democratic leaders were involved in a child sex-slave ring operating inside the pizzeria.

Currently, for those of us in the news industry, no greater scourge exists than the prevalence of "fake news," or what is considered fake news. We don't mean sloppy reporting, or news that someone finds unflattering. We're talking about orchestrated efforts to report lies as truth, such as the story last year that Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump for president.

Whatever its roots or purposes, fake news is being contested on multiple fronts. For instance, the Tallahassee-based First Amendment Foundation and the League of Women Voters hosted a forum in St. Petersburg, Florida, to help people distinguish between real and fake news. The Poynter Institute, the journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, also offers similar programs. Google and Facebook, which host some of the most prolific purveyors of fake news, and the Associated Press also seek to stem the tide.

In that vein, GateHouse Media, the parent company of The Panama City News Herald, announced on Wednesday that it was part of a consortium of hundreds of news media outlets that, with the News Media Alliance, are sorting fact from fiction for their customers. The alliance has launched the "Support Real News" campaign to promote the work of journalists, editors, photographers and videographers who document the events of their communities and bring people the news that directly affects them.

In a promotional video, the group notes that the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press has been exploited by fake-news peddlers. "The public needs the truth," the ad says, "not misleading social media headlines and fake news."

Admittedly, the need for the "Support Real News" campaign is largely self-inflicted. The trust in much of the news media, especially at the national level, has eroded because the public perceives an agenda that crosses a line from reporters delivering facts to engaging in advocacy or editorializing.

That said, however, we would remind our readers that just as the public can most affect government at the local level, the same can be said of the media. The staff of the News Herald works diligently to tell local stories, and that will remain our focus.

In a statement, Bill Church, GateHouse Media's senior vice president for news, noted, "To do journalism with impact, we must be vigilant in pursuing the truth, being the public's watchdog, and setting a high bar of credibility."

Regardless of what goes on elsewhere, that's what you, our readers, can expect of us here at the News Herald. That's our real news.

REPRINTED FROM THE PANAMA CITY NEWS HERALD