Eighty-one percent of respondents to a recent Yomiuri Shimbun survey said they feel there is a lot of fake information on the internet and in other media.

The spread of fake news has become an issue in the United States and Europe.

Regarding the internet and media, 63 percent of respondents said they more often access similar opinions and views to their own compared to opposite opinions, while 26 percent took the opposite attitude and said they more often access different opinions and views.

Eighty percent said there should be opportunities at school to learn about how to discern correct information from incorrect information. When asked about how they learn about the news (up to three answers permitted), “newspapers” and “commercial TV stations” came in top at 62 percent, followed by NHK TV at 55 percent.

The survey was conducted from Sept. 5 to Oct. 12 ahead of the 70th Newspaper Week starting on Sunday. A questionnaire was mailed to 3,000 randomly selected eligible voters, with 1,879 people submitting valid responses.