The world of fact-checking
Charlie Halford (Principal Research Engineer) from BBC presented BBC Verify and Project Origin, both focussed on fact-checking news. The projects are a response to the declining public trust in media due to rising polarization, social media, shifting funding models, and the surge of generative AI technology. This global crisis requires a fundamental shift. It’s no longer sufficient to tell the audience to trust the media. There is a need for tools to make informed decisions about what is trustworthy. BBC Verify and Project are the answer to counter misinformation and restore the faith in media content. Let’s verify those projects.
BBC Verify
BBC Verify is a news team that aims to elevate media trust through transparency. The journalists behind the project investigate the sources of the content with editorial tools. BBC Verify utilizes visual verification, open-source intelligence, fact-checking, and debunking, to provide users with a comprehensive view of news content. The objective isn’t to dictate trust but to transparently show the audience the process behind the information. This allows the audience to assess its trustworthiness based on the provided information. But addressing a global problem requires collective efforts, that's why BBC goes beyond BBC Verify.
Project Origin
Project Origin is an alliance between the BBC, Media City Bergen, Microsoft, Telegraaf, CBC and IPTC to establish a chain of trust from publisher to consumer. The cornerstone of Project Origin is the Coalition for Content Governance and Authenticity, also known as the C2PA. The open standard offers a user interface that displays the provenance of media content. The tool reveals where content originated and how it evolved, allowing publishers and consumers to check for alterations or manipulations since its release. The content's traceability is possible due the broad adoption of the C2PA standard across multiple platforms by a wide range of technology and media industry leaders. For instance, Canon is embedding this technology in their cameras and Adobe integrates it into Photoshop. This wide adoption gives users the transparency to make informed decisions about the authenticity of the content they encounter.
Learnings
What are the lessons learned regarding the declining public trust in the media? Firstly, rebuilding trust begins with embracing transparency at every stage of the editorial process. The audience needs to understand how content is verified and where it originates. Secondly, providing provenance data, which details the complete history of the media content, is crucial. This helps users to identify the source and any alterations made to the content. Thirdly, it’s important to empower the audience, trust cannot be forced. It must be earned through transparency, enabling the audience to make informed decisions about the content they consume. Last but not least, open standards, like the C2PA play a vital role to ensure a wide transparency adoption across the industry. One thing is for sure, if your audience is more critical than ever give them the transparency they ask for.
Would you like to delve even deeper into the world of Project Origin and the C2PA standard? Check out the links below.
- Project Origin: https://www.originproject.info/
- C2PA standard: https://contentcredentials.org/
