The Hindu is partnering with the BBC and other leading global news and technology organisations in a new industry collaboration to tackle disinformation. The collaboration was announced by the BBC and the partners in the early hours of Saturday.
Under this collaboration, news and technology majors will work together to protect their audiences and users from disinformation, particularly around crucial events such as elections.
Earlier this year, the BBC convened a ‘Trusted News Summit’, bringing together senior figures from major global technology firms and publishing.
It was precipitated by events such as the Indian elections, which highlighted the dangers of disinformation and underlined the importance of working together.
The summit agreed to work collectively on various initiatives, including creating systems where organisations can warn each other quickly when they discover disinformation that threatens human life or disrupts elections. The emphasis of the ‘early warning system’ will be on moving quickly and collectively to undermine disinformation before it can take hold.
Online campaign
The summit also agreed to work towards a joint online media education campaign, and also to co-operate on election-related information such as explaining how and where to vote.
“Disinformation and so-called fake news is a threat to us all. At its worst, it can present a serious threat to democracy and even to people’s lives. This summit has shown a determination to take collective action to fight this problem and we have agreed some crucial steps towards this,” said Tony Hall, Director-General of the BBC and European Broadcasting Union (EBU) president.
The BBC’s partners who attended the summit were the EBU, Facebook, Financial Times, First Draft, Google, The Hindu, and the Wall Street Journal. Other partners were AFP, CBC/Radio-Canada, Microsoft, Reuters, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and Twitter.
