Associations and journalism schools are being urged to join America's News Media Alliance in the second phase of its campaign to support "real news".

The campaign launched in March with a mission is to raise awareness of the importance of real news produced by trusted news organisations employing high-quality, investigative journalists.

"The first phase of the campaign set the stage on which to build an on-going series about what we do as an industry and why it is valuable," NMA president and chief executive David Chavern says.

"This next phase incorporates other associations and journalism schools to focus on the need for news literacy and will build with new messages being rolled out over the course of the next three months."

The campaign calls on the public to support real news by using trusted news sources produced by trained journalists. These journalists adhere to a code of ethics that requires them to report all sides of a story, even the aspects they don't agree with. The campaign also provides links to third-party resources to help consumers learn how to tell if a news source is credible.

News Media Alliance innovation vice president Michael MaLoon says that with the digitisation of news, it can be difficult to tell real from fake news: "They can look identical," he says. "That's why it's important to know the red flags to look out for that may indicate a story is not real. We want to help people with that."

Following the initial launch, the campaign's list of partner organisations has grown to 11, including: the Center for Public Integrity, Inland Press Association, ICIJ, Local Media Consortium, Newseum Institute, Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Center for News Literacy, University of Washington, WAN-Ifra and the World Editors Forum, and Washington State University's Edward R. Murrow College of Communication.

New digital, social and print resources are available to promote the campaign, including a print and digital ad to run in print and online news publications. A new web page is featured in the ads - www.newsmediaalliance.org/isitrealnews gives consumers a list of programmes, articles, tips and other resources on evaluating news for authenticity.

"This is a campaign that anyone who cares about quality journalism can get behind," says Chavern. "We hope that through our efforts, the public will know what to look for when evaluating sources and will always use a trusted, respected source for their news."

More information from www.newsmediaalliance.org/supportrealnews.