'This really does pull back the curtain on all the due diligence that journalists go through in order to put a solid story together'
The Trust Project, an international consortium of more than 75 news organisations who are collaborating to increase transparency in journalism, has released the Trust Indicators, a set of standardised disclosures aimed at providing clarity on a publication's standards, work process and its journalists' backgrounds.
The non-partisan initiative, led by award-winning journalist Sally Lehrman of Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, announced yesterday (16 November) that leading media companies around the world, as well as Google, Facebook, Bing and Twitter, are starting to use the indicators to give people more information about the stories they are reading to help them identify high-quality news.
Representatives from a variety of news outlets worldwide identified the indicators following in-depth interviews with members of the public about what makes information trustworthy, and decided on a set of eight core ones to implement first:
Each news organisation displays the indicators, both on individual article pages and on site-wide pages, according to their design, and they are integrated with a publisher's content management system and site code.
This is a mock-up of a story featuring the indicators, and there is also a Trello board available with links showing what they look like live on the websites of publishers who have started incorporating them.
The first set of news organisations to adopt the measure include German press agency dpa, The Economist, The Globe and Mail, the Independent Journal Review, Mic, La Repubblica, La Stampa, Trinity Mirror and the Washington Post, who worked closely together on the visual and technical aspects of the project. More news outlets will be able to join in the second round of the initiative.
The Trust Project is funded by the Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund, Google, the Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund, and the Markkula Foundation.
The Trust Project has also been working with the Institute for Nonprofit News to build and test a WordPress plug-in that allows smaller qualified outlets to participate.
"I think it will make a difference in how the public perceives what we do," Lehrman told Journalism.co.uk. "In our interviews, we found there was a lot of desire to be informed and to understand what is going on in the world, but people were very uncertain about what they could trust and wanted to know a lot more about what's behind the process of an individual article or the standards behind the site.
"So this really does pull back the curtain on all the due diligence that journalists go through in order to put a solid story together."
The Trust Indicators are also integrated into the latest Schema.org technical vocabulary, which allows technology companies to incorporate them in the way they display news stories.
Google, Facebook, Bing and Twitter are currently testing ideas for how to best implement them. For example, Google is hoping to "use the Type of Work indicator to improve the accuracy of article labels in Google News, and indicators such as Best Practices and Author Info in our Knowledge Panels", Richard Gingras, vice president of news products at Google, said in a release, while Facebook will be displaying the indicators through their additional context module launched in October.
"Over time, my hope is that the public will begin to notice these things on the various sites and notice when they're not there as well, to start developing more of a sense of what to look for in order to really be able to distinguish quality and trustworthy news from other types of news," Lehrman said.
If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).
Sign up to receive job alerts of your choice by email, or manage your subscription
Featured recruiter: click to view its vacancies
Regional news publication seeks a news editor who can build on its online growth and ensure that its printed paper is of the highest quality
Subscribe to our newsletter for latest news, tips, jobs and more
End that deadline stress today and find help in our freelance directory
Kindred Forest partners with Volker Lehmann and local families to bring Wild Beniano Cacao from the Amazon direct to the UK for first time. The Wild Chocolate bar blends rare flavours and sustainability: 20 per cent of profits go to rainforest conservation
Our next Newsrewired conference will be in May 2025, London.
Conferences and study weeks are fantastic opportunities to get the latest updates on the industry and network with your peers
Awards are a great way to have your hard work recognised by industry experts and celebrate your teams. Here is where you can apply
If you find your social feeds a tad too heavy on men's voices, follow and connect with these fantastic women experts on indie media
How do you move print readers to digital? Are there other ways to hold on to subscribers besides a last-ditch deal?