Frequently Asked Questions

We apply a user-centered design process. Based on dozens of in-depth interviews with people from varying backgrounds, executives from more than 100 news outlets collaborated on the precursors to our Trust Indicators®. These standardized disclosures about the news outlet, the journalist, and the policies that keep them focused on the public interest make it easy to identify trustworthy news. Digital platforms, including Google, Facebook and Bing, use the Trust Indicators and the machine-readable signals associated with them in various ways.

Misinformation isn’t necessarily intentional – it could be rumor or poorly researched claims. Disinformation is deliberately misleading. We address both by helping people get more access to the real thing – journalism with integrity — and know when they’re looking at it. Our news partners provide the Trust Indicators so people can make informed decisions about the news they read and share. The indicators provide transparency around features that people have said matter to them, and that clearly distinguish trustworthy news from all the other kinds of information out there.

By focusing on reading and sharing news with integrity behind it, we can lessen the power of misinformation and stop its spread.

The 8 Trust Indicators are a widely accepted standard for assessing the integrity behind a news site. They are transparency disclosures that show who and what is behind a given news story, including the standards, policies and expertise that ensure the site is producing honest journalism in service to the public interest. We developed these Trust Indicators through a user-centered design process, ensuring that they respond to public needs and wants and, at the same time, reflect core journalism values.

Teachers may like our teaching materials and other resourcesrelated to the Trust Indicators.

The Trust Indicators emerged from a collaboration led by Lehrman that includes top editors around the world. She began by commissioning one-on-one user interviews to understand what people value in news – and why and when they trust it. In workshops that followed, news executives married those results with journalism values to identify features that underpin quality and trustworthiness in news: the Trust Indicators.

The process dates back to 2012, when Lehrman brought the Society of Professional Journalists’ New Media Executive Roundtable and Online Credibility Watch to Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, creating the Roundtable on Digital Journalism Ethics. Participants in the 2014 gathering raised concern about the degradation in news ethics and quality due to the pressure to get clicks. Lehrman consulted a specialist in machine learning at Twitter, and Richard Gingras, head of Google News, about the viability of resetting algorithms to support ethics instead of hurting them. Gingras agreed to collaborate, and top editors in the industry from 100 news outlets and institutions contributed to working groups focused on every element of the process.

You can read about where we interviewed people and what they said in the interview sets we have posted. We learned that many people work very hard to check and cross-check the news to be sure they can trust it. Others feel overwhelmed by the quantity of news. Still others are frustrated and angry by what they feel is misrepresentation. We found out that people wanted a lot more information about, as one interviewee put it, “how the story was built.” For a summary of the first round of interviews, read Lehrman’s essay in The Atlantic: “What People Really Want From News Organizations.”

If you look at a Trust Project news partner’s news pages, you’ll find a link to information about the company, details about the journalist who produced the story and a link to find out more, and a clear label with a definition if the piece is opinion, analysis or paid content instead of reported, impartial news. On more in-depth or potentially controversial news pieces, you’ll also learn about the sources used to get to the facts or to understand a complicated issue. The Trust Indicators are referenced in broadcasts, podcasts and video, and can be seen on each news article page. Special pages describe policies and individual journalists’ expertise.

Each news organization displays the Trust Indicators within their own design environment. See our consortium page for a list You’ll find important information about our news partner polices and ownership structure on our news partners page.

The Trust Indicators are offered by newsrooms to provide clarity on who and what is behind a news story so that people can easily assess whether it comes from a reliable news source.

Research, both live and in experimental settings, has found that the Trust Indicators meet user needs. Across two surveys, Reach Plc (UK) found that trust in its flagship outlet, The Mirror, jumped eight percent after it added the Trust Indicators to its site. An experiment at UT-Austin’s Center for Media Engagement found higher evaluations of a news organization’s reputation, including its trustworthiness and reliability, when the Trust Indicators were present. In both of these studies, confidence in the individual journalist was higher as well.

Publishers are responsible for providing the Trust Indicators to users and adding the Trust Project-Schema.org vocabulary to their page code. Compliance questions about UX or technical issues go to the Trust Project internal team, which works with the site to fix them. If we see false claims about participation in the Trust Project, we address them.

We have agreements with external partners to help our news partners showcase their integrity and involvement in the Trust Project to news distribution platforms and other organizations reliant on trustworthy news. We provide information to those partners so they know which sites are Trust Partners in good standing. In addition, Google and other platforms apply their existing quality assurance strategies.

We ask the public to report concerns or make suggestions about coverage using our news partners page. As participants in the Trust Project, our news partners have committed to listening to feedback and advice from the public. We all agree that it’s important for the public to hold news organizations accountable and help them meet high journalistic standards.

The most serious complaints about news partner behavior go through a confidential complaint adjudication process. We evaluate the complaint, review the facts and give the site a chance to respond. If a resolution cannot be reached, we ask the site to remove the Trust Mark from its pages and we remove them from our news partner lists. We provide an opportunity for appeal within one month, and reapplication after one year.

If you want to elevate an issue with a site to the Trust Project or talk to us about our overall work, then please use this form.

The Trust Project is a nonprofit California corporation founded and led by CEO Sally Lehrman, a Peabody Award-winning journalist who has been covering science and social issues related to science for many years.  Our team supports consortium operations from around the world. We operate under a Board of Directors, rely on the strategic expertise of our Advisory Group, and our News Leadership Council of news partners guides us on membership matters, Trust Indicator changes and other  issues related to information literacy and building trust in journalism. Because we operate as a consortium, we also assemble working groups on central issues as they develop, including updates to the Trust Indicators. Our applicant review committee is composed of leaders from our news partner sites.   Learn more in About Us.

The Trust Project must cover its own costs through fundraising. We thank our individual donors as well as Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Google, the Democracy Fund, Meta, Microsoft, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Markkula Foundation for their support over time. The Trust Project’s initial funder was Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist. The consortium was initially incubated at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

Technology companies work with us as external partners. Google, Facebook, Bing use the indicators and their associated machine-readable signals in various ways to enhance their ability to differentiate reliable, trustworthy journalism from other information, and continue to develop new uses.

Richard Gingras, former vice president for news at Google, said, “The Trust Project’s required disclosures and clear definitions should help the public – and Google’s systems – recognize and value quality journalism.” Major technology companies also consult Lehrman and the Trust Project consortium for advice on elevating accurate, dependable news in search and social media.

1. Attend a prospective partners’ meeting to learn more details.
2. Fill out an application for review.
3. After a review, we will notify you whether or not you qualify to participate. If not, you will receive an explanation.
4. If approved, we place you in an implementation cohort, where we guide you and other news outlets to incorporate the Trust Indicators and the commitments they represent into your newsgathering.
5. After a final compliance check, you may go live with the Trust Indicators and use our Trust Mark. 
6. As part of the Trust Project consortium, we will ask you to stay involved in updating the Trust Indicators and addressing other industry concerns.