Dan Rather on fake news, the power of truth, and our...

“If you want to be a journalist worthy of the name, and you want a friend, you better get a dog.”

It’s an old adage, but one that’s stuck with Dan Rather through the nearly seven decades of his career. In the era of fake news, though, the newsman might want to update it: On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a fraud.

The importance of a fierce, independent and adversarial press has been thrown into sharp relief as Silicon Valley and the rest of the country have reckoned with the influence of made-up news online about the presidential election and beyond.

The breadth and depth of fake news suggests that stemming the tide will be no easy task. But, as Rather sees it, any hope of combatting it will require a fearless media, a public steeped in healthy skepticism and a “sense of public service” among the tech companies like Google and Facebook that play an important role in the way news is consumed.

Rather sees fake news — various forms of misinformation made to look and feel like the real thing and given velocity by social media — as symptomatic of the nation’s creep toward a “post-truth” political world, where rival factions can undercut even the most basic facts, seemingly with impunity.

“First a few people, and then a lot of people said, ‘You know what, you can put out completely false things and, especially the way the Internet works, it’ll go viral and worldwide,’” Rather said. “And the truth has no chance of catching up with it.

“Many journalists, including myself, when we get together over an adult beverage, we talk about ‘What the hell happened here?’”

Recent studies indicating how difficult it can be for people to tell fake news from real have stoked Rather’s unease.

A Stanford University study released last month reported that students — from middle school to college — had difficulty assessing the credibility of stories shared on social media. More than 80 percent could not distinguish between advertisements dressed up as articles and actual news.

Gaining ground against fake news and misinformation, Rather said, requires a rededication on the part of the news media to the idea that “what the public needs to know is what somebody, somewhere — especially somebody in power — doesn’t want them to know. That’s news.”

“Everything else is propaganda and advertising, mostly,” he said.

Responsibility for cutting through the haze of fake news, Rather said, also lies with social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook, which allow bogus information to ricochet across the Internet, where likes and shares can reinforce a story’s apparent credibility.

“They’re in the service of making profits and increasing shareholder value, we all understand that. But there needs to be, with that, a sense of public service,” Rather said.

Facebook says it’s working on ways to tamp down on the spread of hoaxes and fake news. But in a Nov. 12 post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that more than 99 percent of what people see on the service is authentic, and that “Only a very small amount is news and hoaxes.”

Rather, still peripatetic at 85, swung through San Francisco last week to help promote “Ashes to Gold,” a documentary being developed by his production company, News and Guts.

The documentary, still in the early stages, will explore Japan’s hosting of the 1964 Olympic Games, an event considered to have marked that country’s triumphant return to the world stage after World War II. At a gathering hosted by the Japan Society of Northern California, Rather said the story was one of “vital importance in this time of uncertainty and anxiety.”

In addition to maintaining an active presence on social media, where he often opines on politics and current events, Rather also interviews prominent musicians and other celebrities for AXS TV, the network founded by Mark Cuban.

After decades spent covering many of of the most important events in recent history, Rather relinquished the anchor’s chair of the CBS Evening News in 2005 under a cloud.

In 2004, just months before the presidential election, Rather and his team aired a piece on “60 Minutes” that raised questions about the service record of President George W. Bush during his time in the Texas Air National Guard. The authenticity of the documents couldn’t be independently verified, and the media pounced on the story, resulting in the firing and resignation of several top CBS News producers, and, ultimately, Rather.

But, Rather said, through it all, he still holds fast to the sentiment espoused by another renowned CBS newsman, Edward R. Murrow, during his coverage of World War II — staying “steady.”

And as he gazes into what the future may hold for American media, Rather remains a strident optimist.

“We Americans have a lot of shortcomings. We make a lot of mistakes. But one of the things we’re good at is adapting,” he said. “We’ll be OK. It may take a while, and it may be a rocky journey, but we’ll be OK.”

Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa