The historic events of 2016: Syria, Yemen, Trump, Brexit, the Brussels bombings, the Italian earthquake in Umbria, to name but a few, are proof that, more than ever, we need high-quality, professional journalism to help us navigate the jungle of information.

When it counts, where do we get our news? Who do we trust? Despite the growing reliance on social media for news, it’s the legacy brands, the traditional press, we turn to when it truly matters.

A recent US report by NORC found that people who rely on social media heavily for news are highly sceptical of the news they encounter in those networks… Only 12 per cent of those who get news on Facebook, for instance, say they trust it a lot or a great deal. From among Facebook news consumers, 66 per cent cite trust in the original news organisation that produces the content as their cue for trust in the content they consume.

Still, regardless of the daily accusations flying around about ‘fake news’, the consumption of news via social media and Facebook in particular is strong and growing. This year’s Reuters news report 2016 found that 44 per cent of respondents say that they use Facebook for news.

Consumers need to realise that avoiding ‘fake news’ is simple: professional journalism is the opposite of fake news. There are layers of checking between the writing of the article and its publication: subeditors, editors, the support of archives and digital data banks, proofreading by heads of department and, in some cases, additional checks by the editor-in-chief and checks by the legal department.

Fact-checking is financed by the publisher who bears the ultimate responsibility for what appears in their brand’s name.

Journalists don’t just cover disasters and terrorist attacks of course: we also rely on them to hold our leaders to account, to investigate corruption and scandal, to provide our entertainment, sports, culture, arts and every possible field of interest.

And who finances this journalism? Who finances the investigations, the travel, the foreign desks, the training, the insurance, the support staff, the photographers, the technical experts, the distribution, the platforms? Publishers do.

Publishers come in all shapes and sizes.  Most publishers in Europe are SMEs and help fuel Europe’s rich cultural diversity. But the reality is that publishers are struggling to finance the professional journalism that is the life-blood of our democracy and the defender against ‘fake news’.

Quality, journalistic content is expensive to produce and the media diversity that serves all audiences from the most local to the most global come at a cost.  Professional journalists need to be paid, trained, resourced and legally protected by their publishers and, whilst the digital revolution has delivered mass, global audiences, it has also created a virtually infinite ad space and therefore prices are low.

Meanwhile, print advertising revenue is in decline and Google and Facebook take the lion-share (72 per cent) of all digital advertising revenue worldwide outside China.

The press faces many significant challenges apart from low ad revenues: unlicensed use by third parties that bypasses advertising revenue potential and the internet genie that fostered the belief that all content online should be free and that any other approach would surely break the internet.

Newspaper and magazine websites lose page views because their articles can be read elsewhere in pirated, parasitical or aggregated form, in full or as extracts of the original, without a licence or payment to the publisher. Publishers struggle to sell advertising in support of that content, or to collect data about how their users interact with their content.

Meanwhile, the platform becomes the main portal for consumers to access news, capturing most of the advertising and large amounts of user data which is not shared fairly with the publishers of the original content.

As a solution, the European Commission has proposed the extension of an existing copyright to press publishers (already enjoyed by the music, film and audiovisual sectors) to provide publishers with the tools to enforce their online copyright.

Part of the current EU copyright reform package, this should be decided by end 2017. Consumers would continue to be able to share articles with friends and family as they are encouraged to do by publishers now, but publishers would be in a legally stronger position to ask commercial companies who monetise their content to negotiate licences.

With so much at stake for the press, for media diversity and for professional journalism, this ‘Publisher’s Right’ would be a crucial step towards guaranteeing a sustainable, independent press.

Professional journalism and independent publishing are the opposite of fake news; the future of the press is at stake and its importance to society should never be underestimated.

Susan Duinhoven is president and CEO at Sanoma and member of the European Publishers Council.