Facebook, Google, Twitter join tool that IDs 'trusted' news

After being slammed for proliferating hoax news, tech giants are joining a program that identifies articles from "trustworthy" news publishers.

Joan E. Solsman Former Senior Reporter

Joan E. Solsman was CNET's senior media reporter, covering the intersection of entertainment and technology. She's reported from locations spanning from Disneyland to Serbian refugee camps, and she previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. She bikes to get almost everywhere and has been doored only once.

Expertise Streaming video, film, television and music; virtual, augmented and mixed reality; deep fakes and synthetic media; content moderation and misinformation online Credentials

Three Folio Eddie award wins: 2018 science & technology writing (Cartoon bunnies are hacking your brain), 2021 analysis (Deepfakes' election threat isn't what you'd think) and 2022 culture article (Apple's CODA Takes You Into an Inner World of Sign)

See full bio

Joan E. Solsman

Nov. 16, 2017 8:51 a.m. PT

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is among the tech CEOs facing mounting pressure to increase protections against fake news stories.
James Martin/CNET

After more than a year of being pilloried for their services spreading hoax news, tech giants Google , Facebook , Twitter and Microsoft's Bing have signed up to a new program that identifies articles from "trusted" news sources.

The initiative, spearheaded by a journalism ethics enterprise called the Trust Project, is being implemented by media companies comprising dozens of news sites. These publishers add indicators to their articles and site coding that clarifies the organizations' journalistic standards, writers' backgrounds and how they do their work.

The indicators also show what type of information people are reading – news, opinion, analysis or advertising.

It's up to the tech companies, however, how they decide to utilize these "trusted-source" indicators. The Trust Project said Google, Facebook, Bing and Twitter have all agreed to use the indicators and they are "investigating and piloting ideas" about how to use them "to surface and display quality journalism."

The Washington Post, The Economist, Mic, The Globe and Mail, the Independent Journal Review, Italy's La Repubblica and La Stampa, Trinity Mirror and the German press agency dpa are among the companies starting with Trust Indicators this month.