The Trusted News Initiative creates Asia-Pacific network

The media organisations that now make up TNI’s new Asia-Pacific network have received training, funded by the Google News Initiative, to help their journalists navigate the disinformation environment.

The TNI is an industry collaboration of major news and global tech organisations, led by the BBC, working together to stop the spread of disinformation where it poses risk of real-world harm.  The creation of the Asia-Pacific network will enable the TNI’s regional partners to share their insights about tackling disinformation and discuss trends in the region.  They will draw on their expertise to share best practices and findings with the wider TNI and alert each other to the most dangerous forms of disinformation through the TNI cooperative framework.

Read more: EFE expands mission to tackle fake news in Latin America

The TNI is expanding its Asia-Pacific presence with the addition of the following group of independent news organisations:

• ABC (Australia)
• Dawn (Pakistan)
• Indian Express (India)
• Kompas (Indonesia)
• NDTV (India)
• NHK (Japan)
• SBS (Australia)

Senior Controller of BBC News International Services and BBC World Service Director, Liliane Landor, says: “With the creation of TNI’s first regional network, we are bringing together trusted Asia-Pacific news-publishing organisations to further reinforce our collaboration and to make it even more efficient and productive.”

Head of Google News Lab, Matt Cooke, says: “As part of the Google News Initiative’s ongoing efforts to strengthen journalism and fight misinformation, we’ve worked with a range of academics, news organisations and nonprofits across the globe for several years. Now, we’re supporting the Trusted News Initiative to deliver targeted, expert training workshops on a variety of digital tools to help journalists as they seek to continue day-to-day verification and fact-checking in newsrooms across the region.”

Current TNI partners include AP, AFP, BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Financial Times, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, Information Futures Lab, Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Microsoft, The Nation Media Group, Reuters, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter, and The Washington Post.

The TNI partnership works collectively in four main areas:

• Fast Alert: creating a system so organisations can alert each other rapidly when they discover disinformation which threatens human life or disrupts democracy
• Intelligence sharing: real-time conversation of equals between news organisations and tech platforms about the evolving nature of harmful disinformation
• Media education: sharing insights and research on how audiences and users react to disinformation, thus informing best practice and supporting better digital literacy
• Engineering solutions: sharing information on engineering solutions for authentication of trusted news sources and improving the information environment.

This is entirely separate from, and does not in any way affect, the editorial stance of any partner organisation.

Read the original press release.