Media agencies of the day are busy flooding us with news - wanted, unwanted, real, fake, good, bad, ugly, whatever. Yet, for the user the challenge to stay truly updated has never been this tough. Sifting the hay from the chaff is both computationally & practically hard!
There's a real need to automatically detect, flag & block misleading information from propagating. Though at the moment the technology doesn't exist, offerings are very likely to come up soon & get refined over time to nail the problem well enough. While we await breakthroughs on that front, for now the best bet is to depend on traditional human judgment.
- Make use of a set (not one or two) of trusted media sources, that employ professionals & expert journalists. Rely on their expertise to do the job of collecting & presenting the facts correctly. Assuming (hopefully) that these people/ organizations behave professionally, the information that gets through to these sources would be far better.
- Fact check details across the entire set of sources. This helps mitigate against a temporary (or permanent) deliberate/ inadvertent faltering, manipulation, influence, etc. of one odd sources. Use the set as a weak quorum that collectively highlights & prevents propagation of misinformation. Even if a few members there falter, unlikely that all would. The majority would not allow the fakes to make it into their respective channels.
- Challenging part being if a certain piece shows up as a breaking news on one channel & not the others. Could default to labeling it as fake/ unverified, with the following considerations for the news piece:
Case 1: Turns out fake, doesn't show up on the other sources
=> Remains Correctly Marked Fake
Case 2: Turns out to be genuine & eventually shows up on other/ majority sources
=> Gets Correctly Marked True
Case 3: Is genuine, but acquired via some form of journalistic brilliance (expose, criminal/ undercover journalism, etc.) that can't be re-run, or is about a region/ issue largely ignored by the mainstream media unwilling to do the verification, or for some other reason can't be verified
=> Remains Incorrectly Marked Fake
Case 3 is obviously the toughest to crack. While some specifics maybe impossible to verify, other allied details could be easier to access & verify. Once some other media groups (beyond the one that reported) get involved in the secondary verification there is some likelihood of true facts emerging.
For those marginalized there are social groups & organizations, governmental & non-governmental that have some reports published on issues from ground zero. At the same time, as connectivity improves, citizens themselves would be able to bring forth local issues onto national & international platforms. In the interim, these will have to be relied upon until commercial interests & mainstream media eventually bring the marginalized into the folds. Nonetheless, much more thought & effort is needed to check the spread of misinformation.
Finally, here's a little script 'op-on.sh' / 'op-on.py' (works/ tested on *nix desktop), to look up opinions (buzz) on any given topic across a set of media agencies, of repute. Alternatively, a bookmarklet could be added to the browser, which would enable looking up the opinions across the sites. The op-on bookmarklet (tested on Firefox & Chrome) can be installed by right clicking & adding as a bookmark in the browser (or by copying the script into the url of a new bookmark). Pop-up blockers in the browser will need to be temporarily disabled (e.g. by clicking allow pop-ups in Firefox) for the script to work.
The set of media agencies that these scripts look up include groups like TOI, IE, India Today, Times Now, WION, Ndtv, Hindu, HT, Print, Quint, Week, Reuters, BBC, and so on. This might help the curious human reader to look up all those sources for opinions on any topic of interest.
Update 1 (16-Sep-19): Some interesting developments:
There's a real need to automatically detect, flag & block misleading information from propagating. Though at the moment the technology doesn't exist, offerings are very likely to come up soon & get refined over time to nail the problem well enough. While we await breakthroughs on that front, for now the best bet is to depend on traditional human judgment.
- Make use of a set (not one or two) of trusted media sources, that employ professionals & expert journalists. Rely on their expertise to do the job of collecting & presenting the facts correctly. Assuming (hopefully) that these people/ organizations behave professionally, the information that gets through to these sources would be far better.
- Fact check details across the entire set of sources. This helps mitigate against a temporary (or permanent) deliberate/ inadvertent faltering, manipulation, influence, etc. of one odd sources. Use the set as a weak quorum that collectively highlights & prevents propagation of misinformation. Even if a few members there falter, unlikely that all would. The majority would not allow the fakes to make it into their respective channels.
- Challenging part being if a certain piece shows up as a breaking news on one channel & not the others. Could default to labeling it as fake/ unverified, with the following considerations for the news piece:
Case 1: Turns out fake, doesn't show up on the other sources
=> Remains Correctly Marked Fake
Case 2: Turns out to be genuine & eventually shows up on other/ majority sources
=> Gets Correctly Marked True
Case 3: Is genuine, but acquired via some form of journalistic brilliance (expose, criminal/ undercover journalism, etc.) that can't be re-run, or is about a region/ issue largely ignored by the mainstream media unwilling to do the verification, or for some other reason can't be verified
=> Remains Incorrectly Marked Fake
Case 3 is obviously the toughest to crack. While some specifics maybe impossible to verify, other allied details could be easier to access & verify. Once some other media groups (beyond the one that reported) get involved in the secondary verification there is some likelihood of true facts emerging.
For those marginalized there are social groups & organizations, governmental & non-governmental that have some reports published on issues from ground zero. At the same time, as connectivity improves, citizens themselves would be able to bring forth local issues onto national & international platforms. In the interim, these will have to be relied upon until commercial interests & mainstream media eventually bring the marginalized into the folds. Nonetheless, much more thought & effort is needed to check the spread of misinformation.
Finally, here's a little script 'op-on.sh' / 'op-on.py' (works/ tested on *nix desktop), to look up opinions (buzz) on any given topic across a set of media agencies, of repute. Alternatively, a bookmarklet could be added to the browser, which would enable looking up the opinions across the sites. The op-on bookmarklet (tested on Firefox & Chrome) can be installed by right clicking & adding as a bookmark in the browser (or by copying the script into the url of a new bookmark). Pop-up blockers in the browser will need to be temporarily disabled (e.g. by clicking allow pop-ups in Firefox) for the script to work.
The set of media agencies that these scripts look up include groups like TOI, IE, India Today, Times Now, WION, Ndtv, Hindu, HT, Print, Quint, Week, Reuters, BBC, and so on. This might help the curious human reader to look up all those sources for opinions on any topic of interest.
Update 1 (16-Sep-19): Some interesting developments:
- Google giving priority to original news article above the ones that are derived/ sourced from the original. A step that may prove beneficial to the spirit of original fearless journalism. (Sep'19)
- Economist's model revealing the underlying biases, or lack of it, with the Google news reporting algorithm. The title captures the crux of the article "Google rewards reputable reporting, not left-wing politics". (Jun'19)
- Ravish Kumar's speech on winning the Magasaysay award for 2019. He touches upon the various challenges, including issues like fake news, propaganda, among many others confronting the professional journalist in todays times, particularly out here in the largest democracy. (Sep'19)
- CSDS report on the impact of social media & others (paper, tv) on the voting behaviour of the Indian voter based on a survey of 24K+ voters from 211 constituencies. (Jun'19)
- NGO Digital Empowerment Foundation report (Fighting Fake News, WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY IS IT? ) on the awareness of fake news, disinformation, misuse of technology & so on among Indians from Tier II & Tier III cities. Study's based on a sample of 3K users across 11 states. Good staring point for those looking to solve the problem, though sample set is small. Also behaviour would differ vastly across regions, languages, metros, villages, etc. One size fits all approach is not likely to work. (Apr'19)
- BBC World Service study titled Duty, Identity, Credibility: 'Fake News' and the Ordinary Citizen in India, under the Beyond Fake News programme (Nov'18).
- Time to make Hopi language like features widespread. Hopi language has grammatical markers that specify whether you witnessed the event yourself, heard about it from someone else, or consider it to be an unchanging truth. Hopi speakers are forced by Hopi grammar to habitually frame all descriptions of reality in terms of the source and reliability of their information. (Source: Chapter 1: The Promise and Politics of the Mother Tongue from the book "The Horse, The Wheel & Language")
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