Ford, Tow Foundation Among Funders of An Anti-Fake News Initiative That is Starting to Take Shape
In the world of philanthropy, it's relatively easy to identify and understand the scope of a specific problem. It's what comes after that's difficult.
Such is the case with the scourge of "fake news." While a broad swath of institutional and individual funders are united in stemming the tide of viral sensationalism, it's far from clear how to achieve this goal. Technology clearly has its limits. Algorithms can't distinguish the contextual "fakeness" of a news item, much less the nuances of consumer behavior and ingrained prejudices.
It's precisely these challenges that the News Integrity Initiative (NII) hoped to address when it launched earlier this year. . .