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Google Announces $300 Million Initiative to Fight Fake News

Google announced it will launch a new $300 million initiative to fight fake news.

According to the search engine giant, the Google News Initiative is their effort to work with the news industry to "help journalism thrive in the digital age" by focusing on promoting quality journalism by decreasing misinformation online.

"It will enable new models for sustainable journalism, elevate quality journalism, and ensure technology allows journalists to do their jobs even better," Google’s Vice President of News Richard Gingras said in a YouTube video released Tuesday.

Google said they will work with news partners in three ways. First, they will build products to meet the needs of news organizations. Second, they will collaborate with news organizations to solve business and industry-wide challenges and lastly, they will develop and support programs to drive innovation across the news industry.

One of the main elements of the initiative is to combat fake news. With the help of different software, it will weave out misinformation during elections and breaking news. They will also look to improve digital information literacy for young consumers.

Another element they will incorporate is subscriptions. Google will allow users to subscribe to different news outlet. Security is also an important component, it will outline an open-source tool that lets companies set up their own private networks on the private server.

According to Mashable, Google did not release the names of specific launch partners, but the video on YouTube includes the New York Times COO Meredith Kopit Levien and Digital Trinity Mirror editor-in-chief Alison Gow.

It also included El País chief digital officer Noemí Ramírez who said in the video that "A lot of the solutions will come from the journalism industry and the tech industry working together."

Times of India COO of digital news Puneet Gupt was also included.

"When journalism succeeds, we all do better," Gingras said.

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