Google vows to be at forefront in fighting disinformation

By ASINA PORNWASIN 
THE NATION

 

 

GOOGLE HAS committed itself to being an able supporting tool for journalists in order to strengthen the quality of journalism and also to fight misinformation, especially during the upcoming election in Thailand, a senior executive said.
 

Google said it is combating misinformation alongside news organisations in Asia Pacific and around the world through Google News Initiatives. The challenge is how the platforms and newsrooms could together strengthen quality journalism and fight misinformation, said Saiyai Sakawee, communication manager of Google Thailand.

 

One part of this mission is the verified fact-checkers. Google is working to increase the number of verified fact-checkers throughout the ecosystem, Saiyai said, including for Thailand.

 

Saiyai said Google is addressing this challenge in three ways: first, it is building products to elevate quality journalism on its platforms; second, it is collaborating with newsrooms to ensure accurate information, and third, it backs research and builds programmes to improve digital literacy. 

 

She explained that Google, as a search engine, is not an oracle of absolute truth. Search results are ranked based on their authoritativeness and relevance. The Google search algorithm balance between relevance and authoritativeness varies, depending on the nature of the query.

 

“Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. We are training our systems to recognise and address crisis events,” said Saiyai.

 

She added that Google was working with the media industry to develop the parameters for quality journalism. For example, it provided the Digital News Innovation fund to The True Project to identify eight indicators of trust: best practices, author/reporter expertise, type of work, citations and references, methodology, locally sources, diverse voices and actionable feedback.

 

The Google News Initiative was launched two years ago with the aim of building a stronger future for journalism. It consisted of three parts: products that help news organisations and journalists succeed in web partnerships; partnerships with publishers to create joint solutions for business challenges; and programmes that help build the future of journalism. 

 

Under Google News Initiative, Google develops and supports programmes called Digital News Innovation Fund and Google News Lab, Saiyai said. 

 

The role of the Google News Lab, whose Asian centre is located in Singapore, is to work with journalists and entrepreneurs around the world, including Thailand, to drive innovation in the news industry. Its global team works with journalists worldwide.

 

It also provides an online trading centre to offer online training courses for journalists around the world. Currently, it is offering 55 lessons in 17 languages on the best practices for using Google’s tools and products. 

 

“The online courses are now available in Thai language. It is free of cost and facilitates journalists as they learn how to use and utilise Google’s tools and products in doing reporting and storytelling. There are many courses, for example, basic knowledge, publishing and monetisation, data journalism, fact-checking, and others. Some of the tools are: Election Databot, Google Search, Google Earth, Google Chrome, Google News, Google Maps, YouTube and Google Public Data Explorer,” said Saiyai.

 

She also mentioned tools journalists could use for election coverage. For example, Flourish, funded by Google News Lab, is free for newsrooms, allowing journalists and developers to upload and reuse data visualisations. She added that Google also offers In-person Training, which was done in Thailand once last year. It has trained 130,000 journalists across 65 countries, including Thailand, in person since 2015.

 

Moreover, YouTube’s Breaking News Context is also available in Thailand, which provides a context to help people make their own decisions.

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/politics/30362903

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2019-01-25

Quality journalism has already gone out the window with fewer and fewer people trusting MSM, and rightly so. They should call it "Agenda Journalism".

 

Ah, no reporting of news that is fake - fair enough. What about news that can’t be proved either way? For example; reporting on something like a person saying they prayed for something and they got? 

1 hour ago, Topdoc said:

Quality journalism has already gone out the window with fewer and fewer people trusting MSM, and rightly so. They should call it "Agenda Journalism".

 

Modern day, it began with Dan Rather and the "Fake but Accurate" hit piece he did on Bush. 

It's only gotten worse in modern times e. g. the Buzzfeed scandal and the Catholic Boys incident at the Lincoln Memorial the other day. 

The new film on fake news 'Hoaxed' looks interesting

Does this mean that they will improve Google Translate so the out put is understandable?

 

How about all the government pronouncements that this issue or that issue will be fixed within XX days? Will they be classified as fake news?

Google are a disgusting company - collaborating with dictatorships, censoring (including on Youtube) whatever does not fit into their politically correct (authoritarian/thought-control) approach to the world, and storing masses of data about all of us and all our Internet searches, etc.

 

I mainly use search engines such as Startpage or  DuckDuckGo (which guarantee more privacy - although 'privacy' seems to be a non-concept these days, especially with the young generation, who love to plaster every last cornflake they ate and every last silly word they spoke all across social media, etc.!).

Google is a CIA creation. You think the CIA is going to reveal the truth?

https://www.globalresearch.ca/social-media-is-a-tool-of-the-cia-facebook-google-and-other-social-media-used-to-spy-on-people/5606170

The fox running a hen-house enterprise says he's a vegetarian.  Uh-huh. 

 

 

Edited January 25, 20197 yr by connda

6 hours ago, simtemple said:

Google is a CIA creation. You think the CIA is going to reveal the truth?

https://www.globalresearch.ca/social-media-is-a-tool-of-the-cia-facebook-google-and-other-social-media-used-to-spy-on-people/5606170

Don't forget the NSA.

The headline is wrong. It should be "Google is at the forefront of enabling disinformation." 

20 hours ago, webfact said:

Google vows to be at forefront in fighting disinformation

Having made a fortune enabling the spread of disinformation, they now plan to make even more money pretending to rein it in. 

Problem is who defines misinformation. Ministry if Truth in Thailand is my guess.