I attended the Shatter Summit in San Francisco this week. It was a conference heavily attended by women who talked about breaking the glass ceiling, but there also was a male speaking there about changing the way we look at news.
Craig Newmark, inventor of the San Francisco-based Craigslist, spoke about news integrity – something about which those of us who cover Washington, D.C., are very concerned.
Newmark, through his foundation, the Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund, helped pay for the founding of the News Integrity Initiative along with the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
He, along with other industry leaders, helped “a group of tech industry leaders, academic institutions, nonprofits and other organizations” launch a $14 million fund to support the News Integrity Initiative, or NII, according the press releases. The NII is a global consortium that helps consumers make informed judgments about the news they read and share online. Their goal is to trust in journalism around the world and to better inform the public.
Newmark said at the conference that you succeed in life by doing well and by doing good, and his News Integrity Institute is just one step toward achieving that goal.
As I wrote last week, a journalist’s job is to discover and report the truth and not do anyone’s bidding. Fake news, as the president has called it, may be fake or it may be real, but the work of groups such as Poltifact and other news organizations will sort out what is real and what falls short of the truth.
What is great about this new initiative is that it is not just taking place in America, but around the world with events in Colombia, Germany, Australia and even Hong Kong. This is happening against the backdrop of Thailand canceling the Foreign News Club’s event for World Press Freedom Day last week and President Donald Trump threatening not to hold press briefings.
With the Internet, an event can be canceled and the rest of the world gets to see it even if Internet connections have been cut off in a country, as most people in the world possess software to get around any Internet blockade. I was told in China by journalists that this is called “leaping over the great wall.”
Fake news sites still make a lot of money and get advertisements, so Newmark and others collaborated in another noteworthy venture. These entrepreneurs started websites that allow people to track ads on fake news sites. One of these is Open X, which, according to its website, bills itself as: “The highest quality programmatic ad marketplace, purposefully built for supply partners. The OpenX Ad Exchange provides publishers and app developers complete control over their entire advertising platform with superior customer support and dedicated Yield Analysts.” The ideas is not only to promote things like green initiatives but to also help small unaffiliated writers such as bloggers earn money.
Another work in progress is The Storyful/Moat Partnership, known by the name Open Brand Safety. They inform advertisers that they should not be spending money on certain sites that are not known to be truthful or which are “clicked on by non-humans.” I never thought of it before, but what is to stop a website from being clicked on by a robot and upping the “hits” it gets and garnering more advertising?
Another group is making sure that ads are placed on websites that are not racist, homophobic or anti-women, and deliver real news and real stories. The website is called Sleeping Giants.
Its mission is to inform advertisers that their ads are being seen on such undesirable sites, and they help these advertisers get their ads removed. They have helped some very large advertisers including AT&T, Kellogg and BMW. It doesn’t take a genius to know that these companies want to be associated with reputable news websites that are not associated with sexism, racism or anything else that is offensive.
Sleeping Giants has used the best social media to make sure that viewers of ads and the companies that place these ads can see screenshots of these ads next to offensive content. What a creative way to make sure offensive content is not seen by people who want a service or product. It is also a way that websites promoting one point of view do not get the money they need to pay staff and overhead.
Fake news does not benefit anyone, and it contributes to our divided society. Making sure that these sites do not get the “fuel” they need in terms of money from advertising is one way to stop them.
Media wishing to interview Ellen Ratner, please contact [email protected].
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