Major Effort to Increase Trust in News Achieves Widespread Adoption

Oct. 9, 2018 –  In a concerted fight against online misinformation, 20 leading news organizations have joined the Trust Project’s efforts to increase transparency and trust in the news media, extending the reach of the global network’s Trust Indicators to 217 million people a month. As the result of this major expansion, today more than 120 news sites around the world are showing the Project’s Trust Indicators – the first transparency standard for news that helps people easily recognize the commitments and expertise behind trustworthy journalism – with dozens more sites in progress. Like nutritional labels, the Trust Indicators are …

Read moreMajor Effort to Increase Trust in News Achieves Widespread Adoption

Santa Clara Magazine's illustration for "Trust Me," an article about the Trust Project.

Trust Project pops up in magazines and mentions

Notice anything new lately? Spring has sprung for the Trust Project, with a story in Santa Clara Magazine, and mentions in NiemanLab, Stuff, and The Chronicle of Philanthropy, just to name a few. A huge thanks for their coverage, which helps spread the word about our work to build trust and transparency in news. Here’s a quick rundown of what you’ll find in each article: Santa Clara Magazine: “Trust Me” tells TTP’s origin story, along with a good overview of our Trust Indicators and lots of insight from Director Sally Lehrman. It was co-written by Deborah Lohse, who helped us launch …

Read moreTrust Project pops up in magazines and mentions

Craig Newmark gifts Trust Project $150K

Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist and Craig Newmark Philanthropies, has deepened his commitment to the Trust Project with a $150,000 gift to support its work. The contribution will help the Project continue to fulfill its mission of building trust and transparency in news as it enters Phase II of its rollout, increasing news partner participation, building public awareness, and fine-tuning the Trust Indicators. This is the sixth donation that Newmark has made to the Project. “I’m a news consumer and want news I can trust. The Trust Project gets to the gist of what that means by helping to strengthen news transparency and more,” …

Read moreCraig Newmark gifts Trust Project $150K

Ozy feature on the Trust Project Director Sally Lehrman

TTP Director Sally Lehrman featured in Ozy

In this Ozy feature by Dan Peleschuk, Trust Project Director Sally Lehrman makes an important distinction about trust in news that frames today’s challenging media landscape: “It’s not about convincing people to trust you,” she says in the article. “It’s about earning their trust.” Accuracy and transparency play key roles in both building, or eroding, that trust: “It’s very important that journalists recognize the power of what we do,” Lehrman adds. “So even if we get something wrong, that has a huge impact.” Get the full story, “On the Front Line of the Battle Against Fake News,” here.

INN webinar featuring the Trust Project.

TTP’s West Coast launch celebration and panel

It was a packed house for our West Coast launch celebration and panel hosted by the San Jose Tech Museum on Dec. 12. The event, “The Trust Project: Using Technology to Restore Faith in the News,” featured Trust Project Director Sally Lehrman, and TTP collaborators Richard Gingras of Google and the Globe and Mail’s Devin Slater. Thanks to James Tensuan for the great photos!

Google’s VP of News Richard Gingras

Google VP Richard Gingras on tools for good citizenship

 Here’s a snippet from the Newseum panel “Rebuilding Trust in News” that capped our launch of the Trust Indicators in November. In it, Google News VP Richard Gingras, an early Trust Project supporter, discusses the role of platforms like search engines in helping users discover the information they need to make informed decisions. He details how the elements of the Trust Project help in this effort by providing greater transparency; distinguishing news, opinion, and analysis; and allowing platforms to see the “ingredients” of a story so that they can surface better, more relevant content.   Watch the full video …

Read moreGoogle VP Richard Gingras on tools for good citizenship

Trust tops journalism predictions for 2018

What does journalism’s crystal ball hold for the future? Trust Project Director Sally Lehrman, along with TTP supporters Craig Newmark (Craigslist) and Jose Zamora (Univision News), make their bold predictions for the upcoming year. So what’s in store? Read them all here: “Trust comes first” “Revenue-first journalism” “Working together toward sustainable solutions”  

Online news

Democracy’s immune system is in trouble. Here’s what we can do | Craig Newmark

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist and the Craig Newmark Philanthropies and an early supporter of the Trust Project, lays out four principles for trustworthy reporting online in his CNN opinion piece: “Democracy’s immune system is in trouble. Here’s what we can do.”  Among corrections and honest reporting standards, he points out how simply hyperlinking to direct sources, as part of our Trust Indicators, helps readers to “easily assess the credibility of the news.” Our work joins others, such as the News Integrity Initiative at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, to help solve the issue of trust in news.    

The Trust Project

SCU spotlights the Trust Project

Look who’s on the homepage of Santa Clara University? The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, which hosts the Trust Project, calls SCU home, and we are happy to be a part of the family. In its three-part feature, SCU highlights former editors of The Santa Clara on the need for trust in journalism in “Can We?”; zooms in on award-winning filmmaker and SCU Professor Michael Whalen to discuss “the importance of creating trustworthy documentary films” in “Should We?”; then spotlights our upcoming event with Director Sally Lehrman at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose in “Will We?” 

Multimedia screens

Trust Project aims to improve opinion of media | Todd Smith

“Can the media earn trust by being more transparent about its ethics and values?” In his column for the Mississippi Business Journal, Todd Smith writes about how we’re working to do just that in Trust Project aims to improve opinion of media “The project will standardize increased clarity so that news organizations, large and small, around the world can use it, and so that leading tech giants can find and incorporate it,” Smith writes. Smith also quotes Director Sally Lehrman and gives you great insight into what our next steps are: “I am confident that, over time, this will start to build,” …

Read moreTrust Project aims to improve opinion of media | Todd Smith

The Trust Project