The Trust Project, The Battle Against Fake News, and Fears of Censorship!
By: Daniel Imbellino
Tags: Ethics In Journalism, Combating Fake News, Sally Lehrman, Journalism, The Trust Project

NOTE: We’ve removed some portions of this correspondence for reasons of security and privacy.

In Sally’s own words she definitely clarifies the project is open to all media organizations. Likewise, the Trust Indicators being used to help add transparency in journalism is based on the “NewsMediaOrganization” Schema currently available at Schema.org, and is publicly accessible to all.

Likewise, as Sally notes, the project is still in its early stages, so of course its going to take some time to plan, implement, and test this project with media organizations and journalists. Google too is still working to figure out how the project’s trust mark will be implemented across its products and services.

Given The Trust Project’s intent to add transparency in journalism, its willingness to create an equal playing field, and the project director Sally Lehrman’s willingness to be transparent and responsive with the concerns of our media organization and the public, I wholeheartedly am willing to put trust and faith in what this program is doing.

For that reason, Strategic Social Networking officially endorses The Trust Project as of right now. To learn more about how the project works and how you can get involved, please refer to the linked resource at the top/bottom of this article, or use the link below to go directly to the project’s site.

Addressing The Fear of Censorship in Journalism and Media:

The fear of censorship in journalism appears to have grown exponentially in recent times as search giants like Google have publicly noted they’re working to rise more authoritative and trusted news sources across their products and services. Add in a decade of growing mistrust among the public for tech giants like Google and Facebook, and its no wonder the world of independent journalists feels caught on the defensive.

I think in the case of the Trust Project, its not so much the project that the public or journalists mistrust, but rather the media and tech giants that have proven time and time again not to always act within the best interests of the people they serve. Add in the souring mistrust from the public in terms of the news they ingest, and it all seems like a recipe for disaster.

To help quell some of those fears, I think its best to reiterate the underlying intent of The Trust Project. “The project seeks to create a system of public accountability in journalism through a system of transparency in reporting.” The project makes use of “Trust Indicators” for journalists to adopt in their reporting practices. Those indicators are intended to help the public be the ultimate judge of the honesty and integrity of the news they’re served. The project simply wants people to have more information about the ideas and news coverage they ingest, so they can make better informed decisions for themselves.

Blurring The Lines Between Fact and Opinion:

Here I want want to shore up the public’s confusion between fake news and opinion. The reasoning is simple, people often confuse ideas and opinions as stated facts, and or news.

For starters, news is not an opinion, its a statement of an event, and claim to how something came to be. Although, often opinions are present in news stories. Likewise, opinions are not news, but rather the expression of the personal views of the individual.

When search engines say they’re “Working To Stamp Out Fake News”, they do mean misleading news, and not ideas or opinions, two completely different things.

The problem is, shady actors in the media, both large and small, often attempt to blur the lines between opinions and facts, or personal ideas and news. Such is the case with platforms like YouTube, where conspiracy theorists often pitch their stories as news, and fail to notify their viewers that the ideas portrayed are in fact not news at all, but rather just an opinion and corresponding set of ideas based on their own intuition.

Likewise, honest news coverage and journalists who operate with integrity in their reporting practices will always make every effort to disclose the sources of their information, cite those sources openly, and back up their claims with sound proof of any claims being made.

However, things like conspiracies theories or personal opinions should never be presented to the public as fact, and never as news. Yet, this is the problem in reporting we see time and time again across the wider scope of media.

While its true that many have noted steep drops in rank and visibility in recent times, the good news is journalists and media organizations who publish with honesty and integrity have nothing to fear from these changes. In fact, the more honest one is with their reporting, the more likely they are to be given more visibility across the open web. Google’s ranking algorithms have long been centered upon factors of trust, this is nothing new, they’ve just sought to further expand these principals more recently.

Google has also taken more steps recently to combat fake news and misinformation (not opinions) on its video sharing platform YouTube. YouTube’s President of Product Management at YouTube, Johanna Wright, has stated the platform is giving more prominence to well known media organizations in YouTube’s search results and trending topics, as noted in this article from Routers: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-youtube-content/youtube-sharpens-how-it-recommends-videos-despite-fears-of-isolating-users-idUSKBN1DT0LL

The idea here is very simple, Google wants to ensure the news you’re receiving is from trustworthy sources, rather than rogue media outlets who publish sensational headlines solely with the intent to make a fast buck.

Who Determines What News is Fake or Real?

I think the bigger question here shouldn’t just be who, but rather what, determines a news story to be authentic. While its true that tech giants are often playing judge and jury with the stories that traverse the web, fake news is simple to spot. Its any story that cannot be validated or substantiated, and provides no evidence to back up its claims.

For those journalists who fear rampant censorship as a result of tech giants intent to control the extent of misinformation on the web, my message to them is simple, just be honest in your reporting!

Its not just algorithms that judge content on the wider social web today either, but rather real humans. I know this because I’ve been moderating on Google+ for years, and I’ve personally thrown thousands upon thousands of junk news stories in the trash where they belong. If someone posts a wild claim in one of our communities, we then review the claims being made. If those claims cannot be validated, the story is removed and the user is reported for spamming.

As for the moderators of our media on Google+, including Strategic Social Networking, its never our goal to judge people’s personal ideas, beliefs, nor opinions, but rather to judge the validity of what are often wild claims being made.

The message here, if you cheat, you’re going to lose on the modern web! If your intent is to manipulate and deceive the public, you’re going lose!

Facebook too is also looking to stamp out misleading news coverage on their platform. In this story from Hot Hardware, “Facebook Asks Users To Rate Trustworthiness Of News Outlets So It Can Take Out The Trash” , the article notes the struggles Facebook has gone through to contain the issues with misinformation, and what new steps they intend to put into place to help stamp it out.

As the article notes, Zuckerberg appears to signal the willingness to let users be the judge and jury of the news stories that traverse the Facebook platform. Facebook plans to do this by asking users if they’re familiar with a news source and whether or not they trust that source.

As Zuckerberg noted himself, and as was noted in the article from Hot Hardware, “The hard question we’ve struggled with is how to decide what news sources are broadly trusted in a world with so much division.”

Despite Facebook’s claims, I’ve honestly seen no reason to believe that the platform has made any solid efforts in the past to stamp out fake and misleading news coverage. In fact, upon my own analysis, it appears Facebook has only gone as far as to remove fake news stories from bad media outlets, all the while allowing these deceptive media outlets and the crooked journalists they employ to continue to operate on their social platform, despite being repeatedly warned by Facebook. Such is the case with the disreputable news outlets The Gateway Pundit, and Campus Reform; both of which have been repeatedly cited as publishers of fake news by reputable fact checking websites like Snopes.

Facebook lacks heavily in terms of its accountability of media and journalists. In fact, I recently blasted Facebook’s Product Designer of Newsfeed Jeff Smith, in regards to this article: “Designing Against Misinformation.”

In that article, it appears Jeff insists the platform’s stance towards combating fake news is to reduce its distribution, all the while continuing to allow bad actors to spread more misleading information.

Here was my initial response: “News Flash”, reducing the distribution of articles disputed by fact-checkers doesn’t hold the perpetrators of fake news liable for their actions. What you’re essentially stating is that Facebook is going to continue to allow fake news to flourish, just with some stupid label.”

You can read the rest of my response here: https://medium.com/@webguru4real/news-flash-reducing-the-distribution-of-articles-disputed-by-fact-checkers-doesnt-hold-the-11ffa1ae9f88

As for the Trust Project, its intent is not to play judge or jury itself, but rather to invoke the system of transparency as noted above, so those who ingest content and ideas across the web can better judge the validity of content and ideas for themselves. After all, honest news coverage should always cite its sources and seek to validate any claims being made with real world evidence to back up those claims.