See https://i4ada.org for additional information and videorecordings of the presentations held at the Hague Summit for Accountability in the Digital Age-

1. What happened to Journalism?
NEWS INDUSTRY
 Biz model shift to ‘eyeball traffic’
trivializes content for most
 Devil’s Bargain: FREE news for
viewer Attention (=Ad Rev)
 Sensational headlines gain
‘search’ ranking & ‘virality’
 Online News Media scramble for
ATTENTION not TRUTH
 Journalism mission abandoned

2. Digital scramble leaves Truth behind
Connect family, friends & groups
Bias in content-interest & sharing
Alternative viewpoints filtered out
Cocoons, Filters & ‘Echo-
Chambers’
No ‘gate-keeper’ for content
FACTS not verified before share
FREE access to kill boredom
Activists use to mobilize crowds
SOCIAL NETWORKS

3. GOOGLE dominates global Search
GOOGLE dominates:
Text Search 69.35%
Image Search 20.45%
Google tweaks its
ranking algorithm on
‘original sources’ for
news content. W-I-P
Original ranks up.
Is it News, Opinion,
Comment?
Direct quotes? Etc.

4. Accountability by
Source Transparency
MICRO MEASURES
 Fact-check News
 Verify Source
 Flag Unattributed Content
 Detect Trolls & Block
 Blacklist Fake Sources & Trolls
PROBLEM: Labour-intensive; Fact-
checkers refer other media; Black Web
mutates
MACRO SYSTEMS
 NEWSGUARD – assigns Green & Red
trust labels by human-curation. Founded
2018 by Brill & Crovitz. Investors incl. Knight
Foundation & Publicis. Licensed to Google
Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox & Safari
 TRIVE – Algorithmic tracking
 Our. News – uses crowd-voting
PRESSLAND – Logs media chain as
public index of creators

5. HYBRID Approach?
NEWSGUARD
(Human-centric)
Senior journalists as editors &
advisers in each country
“We apply human intelligence
to a problem that Silicon Valley’s
AI has failed to solve:
the plague of misinformation &
disinformation online.
- Angelo Pauro, Newsguard Italy
GOOGLE
(Data-centric)
Over 10,000 3rd Party “Search Quality
Raters” feedback on Algorithm changes
“Raters provide a human
assessment for our ranking
systems and machine-learning
labels…
We evolve new models. We
experiment and test. Search is
always a Work-in-Progress.”
- Richard Gingras, VP News, Google

6. PRESSLAND Jan 2019
It is not the business of profiteers,
the government or billionaires to
reclaim public trust in media. This
responsibility and challenge
belongs to the media itself.
Content marketing and sponsored content
have encouraged publishers to blur the line
between journalism and marketing.
Affiliate advertising clogs the web and social
media with phony reviews, untrustworthy
news and other scams.
•Who wrote this article, and what is their
history?
•Who edited this article, and what is
their history?
•Who else influenced this article’s
production?
•Who published this article?
•Who owns the publishing outlet? Who
are its executives and directors?
•What conflicts of interest, if any, are
evident from analyzing this data?
And, finally:
•Given this information, can I trust what I’m
reading, watching and sharing?

7. One
Matrix of
Content
Reliability