To Check The Spread of Fake News, Google Will Train 8000 Journalists In India

The initiative is aimed at raising awareness against misinformation and providing new tools to the publishers

By: Rakesh Jha |
June 19, 2018 7:01 pm

In last few years, some of India’s top news outlets have fallen victim to fake news and how. To check the spread of misinformation, Google India has launched a News Initiative, under which 8000 journalists will be trained by the tech giant over the next one year in English and six other Indian languages.

For this purpose, 200 journalists will be selected from across India who will hone their skills in verification and training during five-day train-the-trainer boot camps that will be organised for English and six other Indian languages, IANS reported.

This network of certified trainers will then train more journalists and the workshops will be conducted in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi and Kannada in cities across India, Google said in a statement.

“The focus of the training will be fact-checking, online verification and digital hygiene for journalists, using a curriculum built by experts from First Draft, Storyful, AltNews, BoomLive, Factchecker.in, and DataLeads,”it added.

Aiming to raise awareness against misinformation and providing new tools to the fourth estate against fake news, Google had launched a $300 million Google News Initiative to fight the spread of fake news in March. It partnered with publishers to help digital journalism thrive. The tech giant is now extending this program to India.

Google News Lab Lead (Asia-Pacific) Irene Jay Liu said supporting trusted, authoritative media sources is a top priority for Google, PTI reported.

“When journalists and communities work together, armed with the online tools to verify information, they can build a bulwark of trusted media to fight the tide of misinformation,” Liu added.