The Transparency Initiative
The transparency initiative is a major new international project led by the Media Standards Trust in association with the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI). We are exploring and developing ways to make online news more transparent so that the public has the information they need to make good choices.
In May 2008, the Transparency Initiative became the first UK-based project to win a grant from the Knight News Challenge, an international project which funds innovation in digital journalism (read more). The MacArthur Foundation has also supported the project since its inception.
The issue
In 2006 the world generated 161 billion gigabytes of digital information. That is equivalent to 3 million times the information in all the books ever written. By 2010 we will be creating 6 times as much again. 70% of this, it is predicted, will be user generated.
How can anyone be expected to navigate through this forest of information? How can people distinguish between accurate, useful information and inaccurate mis- or disinformation? One way is to look for news articles, particularly those written by reputable organisations. News covers every subject from politics to health, accumulates faster than almost any other content, and is syndicated via countless different outlets. A major news story, for example, will have as many as 2,500 articles associated with it on Google news.
And yet there are no consistent ways by which the public can see how an article was produced. Is it an eyewitness account or was it based on agency reports? Is it intended as a report or as commentary? Is it based on multiple sources and if so are they referenced? Has someone else edited the article or is it self-edited and self-published? Nor, in most cases, is there a way to challenge the accuracy of the piece. Without any consistent criteria explaining how the article was produced it is very difficult to assess the credibility of the article or to compare it fairly to other articles.
As the amount of self-published material increases it will only become more difficult to judge the credibility of journalism without greater transparency.
The Initiative
The Media Standards Trust will be working closely with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, and the other directors of the Web Science Research Initiative to explore and develop ways in which help people find and assess news content on the web.