A regulator should oversee tech giants like Google and Facebook to ensure their news content is trustworthy, a government-backed report has suggested.
The Cairncross Review into the future of the UK news industry said such sites should help users identify fake news and "nudge people towards reading news of high quality".
It also backed tax reliefs to encourage the provision of local journalism.
In addition, the report called for a new Institute for Public Interest News.
Such a body, it said, could work in a similar way to the Arts Council, channelling public and private funding to "those parts of the industry it deemed most worthy of support".

The independent review, undertaken by former journalist Dame Frances Cairncross, was tasked with investigating the sustainability of high-quality journalism.
Its recommendations include measures to tackle "the uneven balance of power" between news publishers and online platforms that distribute their content.
Services like Facebook, Google and Apple should continue their attempts to help readers understand how reliable a story is, and the process that decides which stories are shown should be more transparent, it said.
"Their efforts should be placed under regulatory scrutiny - this task is too important to leave entirely to the judgment of commercial entities," according to the report.
A regulator would initially only assess how well these sites are performing, but if they are not effective, the report warned "it may be necessary to impose stricter provisions".
Yet the report fell short of requiring Facebook, Google and other tech giants to pay for the news they distribute via their platforms.
Dame Frances told the BBC's media editor Amol Rajan that such "draconian and risky" measures could result in firms like Google withdrawing their news services altogether.
"There are a number of ways we have suggested technology companies could behave differently and could be made to behave differently," she said.
"But they are mostly ways that don't immediately involve legislation."
The report instead recommended "new codes of conduct" whose implementation would be supervised by a regulator "with powers to insist on compliance".
Other recommendations included:
Frances Cairncross earned widespread respect as a journalist for her hard-headed and pragmatic approach to economics.
That pragmatism is the very reason the government commissioned her to look at the future of high-quality news - and also the reason many in local and regional media will be disappointed by her recommendations.
What is most notable about her review is what it doesn't do.
This is because the practicalities of doing these things are difficult, and experience shows that the likes of Google will simply pull out of markets that don't suit them.
There are concrete measures that could boost local news, from tax relief to an extension of the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
And Dame Frances certainly seemed cognisant of the argument that BBC News has over-reached, to the extent that it is harming the commercial sector. But this is a matter for Ofcom.
Ultimately, as this report acknowledges, when it comes to news, convenience is king. The speed, versatility and zero cost of so much news now means that, even if it is of poor quality, a generation of consumers has fallen out of the habit of paying for news.
But quality costs. If quality news has a future, consumers will have to pay. That's the main lesson of this report.
One local newspaper editor welcomed the report's recommendations while suggesting the report "comes too late for so many once proud and important community newspapers".
The Yorkshire Post's James Mitchinson said: "The various fiscal reviews and recommendations... must come quickly... if we are to turn the Cairncross Review into something which we look back upon as being instrumental in preserving what we do for generations to come."
Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright said some of its suggestions could be acted upon "immediately", while others would need "further careful consideration".
Shadow Culture Secretary Tom Watson urged the government to tackle Google and Facebook's "duopoly" in the digital advertising market, and said Dame Frances was "barking up the wrong tree" in recommended an inquiry into the BBC's online news output. Follow us on , on Twitter , or on Instagram at . If you have a story suggestion email [email protected]. Source: bbc.com