Google has stepped in to define its role amidst all the issues that cloud around the news industry and the apparent obscurity in the future of journalism. In a recent article for the News Lab, Google informs the public of their initiatives with news organisations in the attempt to address industry challenges. The effort started in 2015 to navigate the issues and build a stronger future for news.
In 2016, after much debate and research, Oxford dictionary identified its word of the year to be "post-truth," an adjective which they defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. Coincidentally, it was also on the same year that media itself became the news - the time when news came out not only biased but more painful, fake and increasingly became the subject of journalistic investigations due to loss of public trust.
In the first of the four-part series article on the matter, Steve Grove, News Lab Director also identified two more major issues: rapidly-changing business models for news organizations and fundamental questions about the relationship between journalism and technology. On this article, we will highlight their efforts to fight misinformation and educate readers.
This year, the prevalence of fake news fostering distrust is even more pronounced, there is a noticeable shift in the platform by which people are turning for news, the quality of news that is outperforming real news and the extent by which it is affecting traditional media. More details on how they are addressing these issues as we discuss further.
With the series of events that happened across the world and more significant events yet happening, the efforts to fight misinformation has not been as important as today. On this part, Google is focusing its efforts on three key aspects - platforms, newsrooms and consumers.
To prevent the spread of misinformation on their platforms, the News Lab built partnerships to support its efforts. Through “The Trust Project,” they worked 75 news organisations that newsrooms can add to their content to enable people from distinguishing reliable from inaccurate content. They worked with organisations that will develop signals that will identify journalism of quality and integrity. To help consumers validate a newsworthy claim by providing more information on the claim and their assessment of its authenticity. They are also working to double the number of fact-checking institutions by 2019 by partnering with the International Fact-Checking Network and supported this effort with training and technology.
In the newsroom, Google is determined to provide leverage to organisations that have rolled their sleeves to take on the daunting task of fighting misinformation. They help start the First Draft coalition so that digital media verification experts can combine and share best practices across newsrooms which resulted to the production of “A Field Guide to Fake News” and “Information Disorder” that tackles understanding and fighting misinformation. Pop-up newsrooms were created in collaboration with hundreds of newsrooms around the world to debunk fake news stories and serve accurate information around the UK, French, and German elections. With the efforts apparent success, Google plans to continue the experiment in 2018 and develop tools and training to strengthen this effort.
As consumers, we come to terms with all sorts of news every day and admittedly at one point, we fall victims to false information. It is more difficult now to distinguish fact from fabricated or altered information. Even the tech-savvy people aren’t spared from this dilemma. To educate people and equip them with skills in the digital age, Google launched a news literacy program to ensure their platforms help consumers gauge the credibility of news and online content. For one, Google’s publisher knowledge panel provides readers with an expanded search result to provide background about publishers of content - these include the type of content, owner, the year started, awards and citations, reviews, average circulation, etc. This will help the public to better judge the credibility of content.
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