“Fake news!” is the frequent frustrating chant we, in my business, hear too often.

Often, the allegation comes from people who disagree with or choose not to believe verified news reports. Sometimes, cries of “fake news” come from people actually in the news story who, for obvious reasons, might be attempting to discredit news reports about them.

Other times, journalists are accused of fake news because we’ve made honest mistakes that could be construed as “fake” because, well, it is. That is, incorrect information has been reported unintentionally. When that happens reputable news organizations, like this one, admit the mistake and publish a correction immediately.

But in the world we live in, “fake news” perhaps most often shows up on social media posts. It spreads swiftly, not because people are intentionally attempting to disseminate untruths, but because the story is usually so outrageous or sensational that people, who accept it as accurate, just want to share it.

The Associated Press provides a weekly “AP Fact Check” item examining false news claims widely reported, mostly on social media, and debunking them.

Fake news stories spread incredibly fast across social media, but please, don’t believe everything you read — especially on social media. The best way to verify accuracy of what you read is to go to reputable news sources, look for attribution to reliable sources in the story and seek out balance from both sides of an issue.

But what if information on social media was shared for the distinct and evil purpose of misleading. Sadly, that’s what happened this week.

Most Americans watching in horror are disgusted and heartbroken by atrocities in Europe.

In my world, I live news all day long. We are surrounded by news wire feeds and by national news blaring from multiple TVs in the newsroom. Our reporters constantly are covering local news events seven days a week. Even when I’m off work, I’m not off work. I constantly monitor developing stories, calling the newsroom to check in.

It’s safe to say, with the never-ending exposure, that I’m hardened by news.

This week, though, even I was shaken.

A photo by AP photographer Evgeniy Maloletka showed a tiny swaddled, newborn baby cuddled against her mother’s side on a gurney in a Mariupol, Ukraine, hospital, almost as if to hide from the horrors around them. On the eve of giving birth, the baby’s mother, Mariana Vishegirskaya, fled the hospital when a Russian airstrike hit.

Her face bloodied, she clutched her belongings in a plastic bag and navigated down the hospital’s debris-strewn stairs in polka dot pajamas, AP reported. Images of destruction at the Children’s and Women’s Health hospital shocked the world.

Vishegirskaya delivered her baby to the sound of shellfire.

Then, facing worldwide condemnation, Russian officials began tweeting false claims — that the hospital had been taken over by far-right Ukrainian forces and emptied of patients and nurses. The Twitter account for the Russian Embassy in London claimed the woman was not a victim, but a beauty blogger and model posing as two different pregnant women.

The story is partly true. Vishegirskaya is a Ukrainian blogger about skin care and cosmetics, but the AP reports there was no evidence she was anything but a patient. She has posted multiple photos and videos on Instagram documenting her pregnancy in past months, and in one, she wears the same polka-dot pajamas as last week.

The embassy also posted side-by-side images of two Associated Press photos, one depicting Vishegirskaya and another of a woman being carried away on a stretcher, placing the word “FAKE” over them in red text. The caption claimed: “The maternity house was long non-operational” at the time of the strike.

AP reporters in Mariupol who documented the attack saw victims and damage first-hand — and nothing to indicate the hospital was used as anything other than a hospital.

Twitter has since removed the Russian Embassy’s tweets.

The attacks on a children’s and maternity hospital, indeed, moved the war to a new, increasingly sickening level.

Likewise, the attempts by Russians to discredit reputable news reports about the horrors give new despicable meaning to the term “fake news.”

blinert@tribtoday.com