More than 2,000 news reporting websites have improved journalism trustworthiness with news credibility site NewsGuard.
Key Details
- News credibility website NewsGuard announced that more than 2,000 news and information websites have updated their journalism practices to be more trustworthy.
- The news sites engaged with NewsGuard and are now becoming more accountable and providing readers with accurate news and information.
- A total of 2,141 news websites have increased their NewsGuard scores since being rated by the company. In order to do this, the sites must implement the company’s nine steps of criteria and not report news that is not fair and accurate.
Why it’s news
Fake news is something that has been highly discussed for the last few years as many news outlets have presented false information as real news.
Such news not only releases false information, but also hurts news sources as many people get confused and not sure where they should go to get reliable and quality information.
In an effort to combat questionable news and rate news sources on reliability and facts, NewsGuard was created.
The company rates websites based on nine principles including: if it avoids publishing fake news, corrects errors, and if it avoids deceptive headlines. Since its creation in 2018, it has rated over 8,000 sites.
“We’re pleased that more than one quarter of the news and information websites we’ve rated have shown enough interest in serving their readers, and a commitment to better journalism practices, to change their practices to score higher via NewsGuard’s apolitical criteria ratings,” says NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill, founder of American Lawyer, Court TV, and watchdog Brill’s Content.
If a website doesn’t meet the criteria for NewsGuard the company contacts the website to inform it of the issues and to explain how it can improve its score.