Every journalistic enterprise these days must have technological competence — which is why news companies increasingly rely on technology companies to keep their products up to speed. The year 2020 will test the inverse: Will technology companies finally rely on journalists to help them with their news judgments?
Under enormous political pressure and after complaints by advertisers worried about brand safety, digital platforms have begun to admit responsibility for the misinformation they provide their users and the embarrassment they cause their advertisers. Their efforts have had limited success. Technology companies have no competence in the journalistic work needed to identify purveyors of misinformation, whether through foreign disinformation campaigns or health care hoaxes.
Watching Silicon Valley exercise news judgment has been like watching Walter Cronkite try to write code in Python. Facebook banned Infowars, but left up dozens of similar accounts. It banned Natural News, but hundreds of similar health care hoax sites still use Facebook to peddle falsehoods such as that fruit pits cure cancer and vaccines cause autism. In 2013, YouTube’s chief business officer, Robert Kyncl, was interviewed on the Russian-government run RT network during its celebration on becoming the first news organization with one billion views on YouTube. Mr. Kyncl told the RT anchor that the network succeeded on YouTube because it provided “authentic” content and not “agendas or propaganda.” In fact, RT was founded to deploy disinformation to spread divisiveness in the U.S. and Europe and to publish Putin-supporting falsehoods such as about Syria and poisonings of Russians in the West.
When the platforms try to promote reliable sources and suppress others, the fact that they put their thumbs on the scale for reasons they refuse to explain will always leave them open to accusations of bias. The ethos of journalism is that more information, transparency and disclosure are virtues, with the corollary that operating in secret will never establish credibility or trustworthiness. Digital platforms instead operate using secret algorithms, including for constructing social media feeds and displaying search results.
Four companies have created trustworthiness indicators for news websites: Facebook, Google, Twitter, and NewsGuard. Publishers have no way of learning their secret trust score from the Silicon Valley companies. NewsGuard’s journalistically trained analysts use nine basic, apolitical criteria of journalistic practice to rate news sites on a scale of 1 to 100, with each site getting a Nutrition Label explaining the ratings to news consumers. The nine criteria — such as whether the site discloses its ownership, has a corrections policy and treats the difference between news and opinion responsibly — are fully explained. NewsGuard analysts call for comment when a news website looks like it might fail on any of the criteria. (Algorithms don’t call for comment.) More than 500 news websites have improved one or more of their practices after engaging with NewsGuard — unlike an algorithm, we hope news sites will game our system.
Gallup measured how people think about the difference between the black-box technology platforms use and journalism. Its researchers asked who consumers would trust to give them information about the reliability of news websites. Ninety percent trusted ratings more when done by “trained journalists with varied backgrounds” than by Silicon Valley companies.
The best hope for reducing the role of misinformation is if the platforms rely on transparent journalism instead of on their own secret algorithms. Microsoft took the lead this year by making NewsGuard ratings and Nutrition labels available to its users, including through its new Edge mobile browser.
One reason to hope Silicon Valley will do better in 2020 is that companies in other industries are embarrassing them by taking steps to fix the problem the platforms caused. Aside from Microsoft, NewsGuard is in advanced discussions with internet service providers and mobile providers about how they can deliver a safer internet to their users by providing information about the reliability of news sites. Ad agencies use NewsGuard to help advertisers run their ads only on trustworthy news websites.
Journalists have one belief in common: More information is better than less. Silicon Valley companies operate under the opposite ethos, with their highest priority keeping their secret algorithms secret. News consumers deserve better, and it seems that in 2020 they will finally get it.
L. Gordon Crovitz is co-CEO of NewsGuard and former publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
Every journalistic enterprise these days must have technological competence — which is why news companies increasingly rely on technology companies to keep their products up to speed. The year 2020 will test the inverse: Will technology companies finally rely on journalists to help them with their news judgments?
Under enormous political pressure and after complaints by advertisers worried about brand safety, digital platforms have begun to admit responsibility for the misinformation they provide their users and the embarrassment they cause their advertisers. Their efforts have had limited success. Technology companies have no competence in the journalistic work needed to identify purveyors of misinformation, whether through foreign disinformation campaigns or health care hoaxes.
Watching Silicon Valley exercise news judgment has been like watching Walter Cronkite try to write code in Python. Facebook banned Infowars, but left up dozens of similar accounts. It banned Natural News, but hundreds of similar health care hoax sites still use Facebook to peddle falsehoods such as that fruit pits cure cancer and vaccines cause autism. In 2013, YouTube’s chief business officer, Robert Kyncl, was interviewed on the Russian-government run RT network during its celebration on becoming the first news organization with one billion views on YouTube. Mr. Kyncl told the RT anchor that the network succeeded on YouTube because it provided “authentic” content and not “agendas or propaganda.” In fact, RT was founded to deploy disinformation to spread divisiveness in the U.S. and Europe and to publish Putin-supporting falsehoods such as about Syria and poisonings of Russians in the West.
When the platforms try to promote reliable sources and suppress others, the fact that they put their thumbs on the scale for reasons they refuse to explain will always leave them open to accusations of bias. The ethos of journalism is that more information, transparency and disclosure are virtues, with the corollary that operating in secret will never establish credibility or trustworthiness. Digital platforms instead operate using secret algorithms, including for constructing social media feeds and displaying search results.
Four companies have created trustworthiness indicators for news websites: Facebook, Google, Twitter, and NewsGuard. Publishers have no way of learning their secret trust score from the Silicon Valley companies. NewsGuard’s journalistically trained analysts use nine basic, apolitical criteria of journalistic practice to rate news sites on a scale of 1 to 100, with each site getting a Nutrition Label explaining the ratings to news consumers. The nine criteria — such as whether the site discloses its ownership, has a corrections policy and treats the difference between news and opinion responsibly — are fully explained. NewsGuard analysts call for comment when a news website looks like it might fail on any of the criteria. (Algorithms don’t call for comment.) More than 500 news websites have improved one or more of their practices after engaging with NewsGuard — unlike an algorithm, we hope news sites will game our system.
Gallup measured how people think about the difference between the black-box technology platforms use and journalism. Its researchers asked who consumers would trust to give them information about the reliability of news websites. Ninety percent trusted ratings more when done by “trained journalists with varied backgrounds” than by Silicon Valley companies.
The best hope for reducing the role of misinformation is if the platforms rely on transparent journalism instead of on their own secret algorithms. Microsoft took the lead this year by making NewsGuard ratings and Nutrition labels available to its users, including through its new Edge mobile browser.
One reason to hope Silicon Valley will do better in 2020 is that companies in other industries are embarrassing them by taking steps to fix the problem the platforms caused. Aside from Microsoft, NewsGuard is in advanced discussions with internet service providers and mobile providers about how they can deliver a safer internet to their users by providing information about the reliability of news sites. Ad agencies use NewsGuard to help advertisers run their ads only on trustworthy news websites.
Journalists have one belief in common: More information is better than less. Silicon Valley companies operate under the opposite ethos, with their highest priority keeping their secret algorithms secret. News consumers deserve better, and it seems that in 2020 they will finally get it.
L. Gordon Crovitz is co-CEO of NewsGuard and former publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Power to the people (on your audience team)
Michael W. Wagner Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative
Jasmine McNealy A call for context
Seth C. Lewis 20 questions for 2020
Richard Tofel A constraint of the reader-revenue model emerges
Matthew Pressman News consumers divide into haves and have-nots
Jake Shapiro Podcasting gets listener relationship management
Sonali Prasad Climate change storytelling gets multidimensional
Carrie Brown-Smith Engaged journalism: It’s finally happening
Stefanie Murray Charitable giving goes collaborative
Whitney Phillips A time to question core beliefs
Laura E. Davis Know the context your journalism is operating within
Logan Molyneux and Shannon McGregor Think twice before turning to Twitter
Joanne McNeil A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)
Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech
Helen Havlak Platforms shine a light on original reporting
Jonas Kaiser Russian bots are just today’s slacktivists
Alexandra Borchardt Get out of the office and talk to people
Brian Moritz The end of “stick to sports”
Geneva Overholser Death to bothsidesism
Nathalie Malinarich Betting on loyalty
Logan Jaffe You don’t need fancy tools to listen
John Keefe Journalism gets hacked
Mike Caulfield Native verification tools for the blue checkmark crowd
Meredith Artley Stronger solidarity among news organizations
Mariana Moura Santos The future of journalism is collaborative
Eric Nuzum Podcasting finally creates another mega-hit show
Barbara Gray Join local libraries on the frontlines of civic engagement
Joshua P. Darr All that campaign cash will make the media’s problems worse
Jeremy Olshan All journalism should be service journalism
Brenda P. Salinas Treating MP3 files like text
Sara K. Baranowski A big year for little newspapers
Felix Salmon Spotify launches a news channel
Tom Glaisyer Journalism can emerge newly vibrant and powerful
Mira Lowe The year of student-powered journalism
Catalina Albeanu Rebuilding journalism, together
Heather Bryant Some kinds of journalism aren’t worth saving
Rick Berke Incoming fire from both left and right
Doris Truong The year of radical salary transparency
Steve Henn The dawning audio web
Knight Foundation Five generations of journalists, learning from each other
Cristina Kim Public media stops trying to serve “everybody”
Alana Levinson Brand-backed media gets another look
Kevin D. Grant The free press stands against authoritarians’ attacks on truth
Heidi Tworek The year of positive pushback
Gordon Crovitz Fighting misinformation requires journalism, not secret algorithms
Christa Scharfenberg It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women
Hossein Derakhshan AI can’t conjure up an Errol Morris
Craig Newmark Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation
Nushin Rashidian Are platforms a bridge or a lifeline?
Jennifer Brandel A love letter from the year 2073
Pablo Boczkowski The day after November 4
Cindy Royal Prepare media students for skills, not job titles
Jakob Moll A slow-moving tech backlash among young people
Rachel Schallom The value of push alerts goes beyond open rates
Kerri Hoffman Opening closed systems
Beena Raghavendran The year of the local engagement reporter
Linda Solomon Wood Everyone in your organization, moving toward a common goal
Sarah Marshall The year to learn about news moments
A.J. Bauer A fork in the road for conservative media
Cory Haik We’re already consuming the future of news — now we have to produce it
J. Siguru Wahutu Western journalists, learn from your African peers
Alice Antheaume Trade “politics” for “power”
Kathleen Searles Pay more attention to attention
Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young The promise of nonprofit journalism
Dannagal G. Young Let’s disrupt the logic that’s driving Americans apart
Colleen Shalby Journalists become media literacy teachers
Jim Brady We’ll complain about other people living in bubbles while ignoring our own
Meg Marco Everything happens somewhere
Imaeyen Ibanga Let’s take it slow
Monique Judge The year to organize, unionize, and fight
Bill Adair A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song
Annie Rudd The expanded ambiguity of the news photograph
M. Scott Havens First-party data becomes media’s most important currency
An Xiao Mina The Forum we wanted, the forum we got
Elizabeth Dunbar Frank talk, and then action
Nicholas Jackson What’s left of local gets comfortable with reader support
John Garrett It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization
Margarita Noriega The platforms try to figure out what to do with single-subject newsrooms
Julia B. Chan We 👏 take 👏 breaks 👏
Rachel Davis Mersey The business of local TV news will enter its downward slide
Jeff Kofman Speed through technology
Kourtney Bitterly Transparency isn’t just a desire, it’s an expectation
Joe Amditis Collaborative journalism takes its rightful place at the table
Josh Schwartz Publishers move beyond the metered paywall
Talia Stroud The work of reconnecting starts November 4
Masuma Ahuja Slower, quieter, more measured and thoughtful
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, collaboration in a time of state attacks
Nico Gendron Make better products if you want to reach Gen Z
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists get left behind in the industry’s decline
Ernie Smith The death of the industry fad
Errin Haines Race and gender aren’t a 2020 story — they’re the story
Tanya Cordrey Saying no to more good ideas
Monica Drake A renewed focus on misinformation
S. Mitra Kalita The race to 2021
Sarah Stonbely More people start caring about news inequality
Mario García Think small (screen)
Bill Grueskin Our ethics codes get an overhaul
Irving Washington Leadership isn’t something you learn on the job
Ben Werdmuller Use the tools of journalism to save it
Victor Pickard We reclaim a public good
Greg Emerson News apps fall further behind
Elizabeth Hansen and Jesse Holcomb Local news initiatives run into a capital shortage
Ståle Grut OSINT journalism goes mainstream
Fiona Spruill The climate crisis gets the coverage it deserves
Francesco Zaffarano TikTok without generational prejudice
Carl Bialik Journalists will try running the whole shop
Candis Callison Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change
Peter Bale Lies get further normalized
Matt DeRienzo Local broadcasters begin to fill the gaps left by newspapers
Joni Deutsch Podcasting unsilences the silent
Don Day Respect the non-paying audience
Tonya Mosley The neutrality vs. objectivity game ends
Emily Withrow The year we kill the news article
Anthony Nadler Clash of Clans: Election Edition
Kristen Muller The year we operationalize community engagement
Raney Aronson-Rath News deserts will proliferate — but so will new solutions
Madelyn Sanfilippo and Yafit Lev-Aretz News coverage gets geo-fragmented
Lauren Duca The rise of the journalistic influencer
Tamar Charney From broadcast to bespoke
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The business we want, not the business we had
Sue Robinson Campaign coverage as test bed for engagement experiments
Zizi Papacharissi A president leads, the press follows, reality fades
Simon Galperin Journalism becomes more democratic
Sarah Schmalbach Journalist, quantify thyself
Lucas Graves A smarter conversation about how (and why) fact-checking matters
Juleyka Lantigua A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions