DURING a week in which the need for top-quality journalism has never been more apparent and the challenge to produce it more demanding, I stumbled across a film which shone a beacon for its ability to act as a force for good in the world.

It told of the struggle of two journalists – Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole – to piece together the threat to women posed by a serial killer in Boston and to push the police and the political hierarchy to take that threat seriously.

The “Boston Strangler” has now entered the annals of infamy but it took journalistic bravery and determination to uncover the link which connected the murders of 13 women in the early 1960s and to demand protection.

READ MORE: John Curtice gives verdict on why far-right riots hit England but not Scotland

There are, of course, other examples of journalism which dragged wrongdoing into the light. You will know many of them very well. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward led The Washington Post’s investigation which forced US president Richard Nixon to resign.

The Washington Post also distinguished itself by disclosing the Pentagon Papers, which revealed that Lyndon B Johnson’s administration had secretly extended its operations in Vietnam. Further investigation revealed the administrations of four presidents – Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson – had misled the public over their activities in Vietnam.

The Sunday Times’s revelation of the effects of the drug thalidomide on children and the paltry compensation offered to victims in 1972 stands as a towering achievement of investigative journalism.

It was stories like these which inspired me and hundreds like me to become journalists. Our chances of breaking such hugely important stories may have been slim but they encouraged us to believe that the quest for truth and justice had the potential to make the world a better place.

It was hard to hold on to that belief when looking at the montages of mainstream British media front pages scaremongers about immigration which had been put together after the recent riots in England.

Right-wing newspapers – notably the Daily Mail and the Daily Express – have whipped up public fear of a “migrant crisis” for years, helping to create the atmosphere that erupted in violence in English cities this week.

Those riots present the most important challenge to journalism in Britain for decades – and how it reacts to that could either reinstate public trust in the trade or shatter it completely for more than a generation. It requires real thought and real change to avoid disaster.

There have been some disastrous mistakes over recent days. During a BBC Scotland phone-in discussing the riots, presenter Kaye Adams referred to Nigel Farage’s hateful views on immigration and suggested it was relevant to have a “conversation” about immigration in the wake of the disturbances.

I’d take that to task on a number of levels. First, Farage himself is hardly a major figure in Scottish politics. His party gained 7% of the vote north of the Border – far higher than I would like and higher than the Scottish Greens (3.8%) – but gained not a single MP.

READ MORE: BBC Scotland under fire over article on far-right riots

That level of support hardly justifies the prominence he was given during a discussion on a Scottish radio channel. But then, the BBC has a poor track record in giving Farage airtime that is out of kilter with his level of support.

Secondly, the subject needing to be discussed this week on a radio phone-in was not immigration. To do so would meekly accept the agenda being set by right-wing fanatics.

What we need to discuss are the actions of neo-Nazi thugs in England and what needs to be done – urgently – to counter them. Why would any responsible radio show be so willing to be diverted from the main issue at hand to contribute instead to making immigrants feel even more attacked?

Which brings us to a major problem facing what is described as the Scottish media but which in reality is largely – although not exclusively – controlled outside our borders.

The riots have, at least so far, taken place in England and to a lesser extent Northern Ireland. This is an undeniable fact yet even to point it out leads to accusations of “Scottish exceptionalism”.

So let’s be honest. Scotland is not exempt from racism. There are unthinking bigots north as well as south of the Border. But they do not share the eagerness to bring violence – as we’ve seen in England – to our streets.

That is a fact … yet every day we are told racism and rioting are a UK problem. It is not and it must surely be acceptable to point that out.

The Scottish media has to resist being bullied out of telling the truth simply because it is inconvenient to those eager to promote a homogenous image of Britain. The overall poisonous atmosphere has made immigrants, including some living in Scotland, fearful. Even former first minister Humza Yousaf has considered whether his and his family’s future lies here.

Yet at a time when responsible journalism is needed more than ever, the traditional media is beset on all sides by challenges which threaten its ability to do its job.

READ MORE: Refugee who fled organ-harvesting gangs says riots gave him 'flashbacks'

The internet has decimated its income and no successful alternative has yet been devised to replace the lost revenues. The result has been a wave of redundancies throughout the industry, diminishing the news service it can provide.

The internet has also taken away many of its readers, at least in print. A 2023 report by Ofcom on news consumption in Scotland said that social media is the second most popular source for news among adults aged 16 and over (54%) after television (69%).

It hurts me to admit that many of you will not consider this a bad thing. You view much of the mainstream media as biased, untrustworthy and politically skewed. It’s true that social media brought some good in its wake. It has to some extent democratised the selection of news deemed worthy of publication. It has broadened the range of news and commentary on the news. And it can be fun. But it also created problems, which are particularly serious in the wake of the horrific killings in Southport.

Reports suggesting false claims that the murderer was an asylum seeker who arrived in the UK by boat can be traced to the Channel3Now website, only to be quickly picked up and spread by social media sites. Many people find it impossible to distinguish between fake news and reliable news on social media.

The problem is exacerbated by the mainstream media’s focus on breaking news first. Mainstream news sites and journalists can inadvertently spread disinformation in their haste to get the story out there. All this seriously undermines public trust.

We saw what happened on Wednesday, when Police Scotland was forced to issue a statement denying false claims that a far-right demonstration would take place in Glasgow that evening. If the public can’t tell the difference between fake news and real news, or between disinformation sites and reliable sites, how can they decide who to trust?

Even the language used to report these riots is problematic. The far-right rioters are widely described as protesters. What are they protesting at in this case?

It’s not at the involvement of immigrants in the Southport killings. There was no such involvement. They are not “protesting”.

They are indulging in meaningless violence. They are trying to intimidate innocent people because of the colour of their skin or the religion they follow. Describing them as protesters is a lie. They are thugs. Similarly, describing anti-fascist demonstrators as “protesters” suggests an equivalence between the two sides when there is none.

One side consists of racist thugs, the other seeks to defend democracy. That is the nature of the battle being waged on the streets of England and that surely is how it demands to be reported. The notion of “balance” has no relevance in this context.

The riots are sickening displays of ignorance. The anti-fascist marches on Wednesday night were welcome reminders of how strong the hatred of this poisonous ideology is across the country. Journalism’s aim is not to strike a balance between thugs and anti-racist supporters of democracy. It is to get as close as possible to capturing the truth of a situation.

John Swinney can tell social media companies to get their act together as often as he wants – they will not do so. They have nothing to gain or any means to police comments before they are posted.

The opportunity here is for mainstream media to rebuild the trust it has lost. The public must be convinced of the value of true journalism at a time when its purpose has never been more necessary. The way you do this is by standing up to fascists and spreading the truth. Without equivocation.