São Paulo, May 8 – Projeto Credibilidade, the Brazilian Chapter of the Trust Project, is thrilled to announce that six Brazilian news organizations – Agência Lupa, Agência Mural, Folha de S. Paulo, Nexo Jornal, O Povo and Poder360 – have joined the global effort to fight disinformation and to increase transparency in the news by presenting Trust Indicators on their sites. These indicators, developed collaboratively by newsrooms around the world, affirm and amplify journalism’s commitment to transparency, accuracy, inclusion and fairness so that the public can make informed news choices.
Over the past two and a half years, Projeto Credibilidade has been working closely with eight news organizations to facilitate the implementation of a core set of indicators – statements about ethical and editorial standards, details on the backgrounds of journalists, and labels distinguishing opinion and analysis from news. In practical terms, the indicators can be compared to “nutrition labels,” signaling the commitments behind news content distributed digitally, be they on the outlets’’ websites or social media. There are eight Trust Indicators in all.
“Our project aims to inform people about what is behind the news and the organization that produces it,” said Francisco Belda and Angela Pimenta, coordinators of Credibilidade, which works closely with The Trust Project parent organization. “Transparency and accountability are the best response the Brazilian journalism can provide against challenges such as disinformation, polarization and mistrust.”
“It is an exciting and important day for the Trust Project because these Brazilian news vehicles are the first outside of Europe, Canada and the United States to show the Trust Indicators,” said Sally Lehrman, who founded and leads the Trust Project. “They pave the way for expansion into Latin America and ultimately other parts of news ecosystem we have yet to reach.”
The six news organizations now display the Trust Mark logo to indicate that they have implemented the Projeto Credibilidade MVP of three Trust Indicators. Jornal do Commercio, and Nova Escola are in the process of implementing these three Trust Indicators as well.
Projeto Credibilidade is a partnership between Projor – the Institute for Development of Journalism and Unesp – Universidade Estadual Paulista. Funding for Projor’s support of news partner implementation has been provided by the Google News Initiative and the Facebook Journalism Project.
The Trust Project
The Trust Project is a global network of news organizations building Trust Indicators and working with technology platforms to affirm and amplify journalism’s commitment to transparency, accuracy, inclusion and fairness so that the public can make informed news choices. It is led by award-winning journalist Sally Lehrman and involves news leaders from more than 100 news organizations. Over several years, the Project interviewed people in the United States and Europe to find out what’s important to them when it comes to news and what makes a story trustworthy. Lehrman took that research and worked with top news leaders around the world to design and develop a digital system that meets those needs: the Trust Indicators.
The Trust Indicators
The Trust Indicators clearly describe an organization’s commitment to ethics, inclusive reporting, corrections and other standards, as well as the journalists’ backgrounds, and how they do their work. In addition, the Indicators clearly denote the type of information that a person is reading – whether it is news, opinion, analysis or promotional content from advertisers. Two studies have found that the Trust Indicators help to increase readers’ trust in news sites and the journalists who produce news stories.
Media inquiries: [email protected] and [email protected]