Mediawatch Offshore outfit rating the reliability of our media
US-based NewsGuard is rating New Zealand's significant news sites for reliability - and even preparing 'nutrition labels' to warn users to treat them with caution. NewsGuard is also using human journalists to train generative AI innovations like ChatGPT to minimise the potential for misinformation-spreading on an epic scale.
US-based NewsGuard is rating New Zealand's significant news sites for reliability - and even preparing 'nutrition labels' to warn users to treat them with caution. NewsGuard is also using human journalists to train generative AI innovations like ChatGPT to minimise the potential for misinformation-spreading on an epic scale.
The revelation that three potential terror attacks since March 15 2019 had been thwarted made headlines recently when the bosses of our spy agencies reported back to Parliament.
But the acting boss of the SIS also told MPs malign foreign influence had been brought to bear on New Zealanders online.
Phil McKee named no names or nations, but his GCSB counterpart Andrew Hampton did when he said Kiwis were consuming misinformation from Russia.
"We're not a social media censorship agency," the prime minister said when asked what the government should do about that.
"The GCSB can identify where misinformation is coming into the country from - but what people choose to share on social media are matters for each individual to make decisions about," he said.
A week later the latest AUT annual survey of New Zealanders' trust in news revealed 86 percent of respondents said they were concerned about fake news on the internet.
But do online users know which sources of news they should believe?
It's an international problem.
In March 2018 two former US editors tired of watching fake news proliferate - and the pushers of it profit - started NewsGuard to identify outlets hosting and spreading misinformation.
One was Steven Brill, the founder of Court TV and Brill's Content magazine among other ventures.
"We're going to solve that problem using - guess what? - human beings," Brill said on CNN when announcing the hiring of a team of journalists.
Two years later NewsGuard began to turn a profit and operated in in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Austria and Italy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1PQbLK7vPY
Australia's communications minister Michelle Rowland recently announced that the regulator there would enact an enforceable code against online misinformation if the media industry didn't enforce its own. And the same week, NewsGuard expanded its scrutiny to online news in Australia and New Zealand too…