Facebook, Twitter and news organisations – including AFP, CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post and BuzzFeed News – have joined a coalition of media and technology groups seeking to filter out online misinformation and improve news quality on social networks.
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Jenni Sargent, managing director of First Draft, said the partner network will help advance the organisation’s goal of improving news online and on social networks.
It’s not entirely clear what “false” information this new First Draft organization means to screen out, but the announcement comes at a time when many of First Draft’s partner organizations have been decrying what they see as the media’s failure to “fact check” statements by Donald Trump.
First Draft Coalition, formed in June 2015 with the backing of Alphabet Inc’s Google, said it would create a voluntary code of practice, promote news literacy among social media users, and launch a platform where members can verify questionable news stories.
Facebook, the world’s largest social media site, recently faced backlash over its decision to take down – then restore – a historically-significant Vietnam War-era photo due to “nudity”. Twitter with daily users over 140 million has been criticized for playing a major role in disseminating eyewitness content and breaking the news. Says, Aine Kerr, Facebook’s journalism partnerships manager. “We want to ensure we are building opportunities to learn from the industry and to ensure we continually hear their questions and feedback”. This modern “Trending” feature can also be considered as a way to reduce human bias.
“We live in a time when trust and truth are issues that all newsrooms, and increasingly the social platforms themselves, are facing”, she said.
“We are not going to solve these problems overnight, but we’re certainly not going to solve them as individual organizations”, First Draft added.
Apart from these mainstream media organisations, the group will also include some new members such as Al Jazeera’s AJ+, Breaking News, Amnesty International, European Journalism Centre, the American Press Institute and IBTimes UK.
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Other news providers are understood to be considering joining following the launch.
