Google News Initiative aims to protect quality journalism
In the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, we have witnessed another great spread, that of fake news. Many people have been swayed by these false, often alarming reports, causing more hysteria and unease among society. The giant Google wants to fight this and support quality journalism with Google News Initiative.
This quality journalism that the Mountain View company wants to safeguard has been weakened recently by the appearance of some non-professional blogs where opinion and/or unchecked information is shared, parallel judgments in the increasingly numerous social networks, and the proliferation of sensationalist headlines.
In response to all this, Google wants to get ahead by offering a solution and putting technology at the service of journalism. To this end, it has launched Google News Initiative, which is defined as a project “in collaboration with the journalism sector so it can thrive in the digital age.”
This support and alliance is mainly expressed in three lines: products, collaborations, and programs.
1. Products: This includes the different options Google offers to media and agencies so they can develop and expand their digital platforms more easily. Some of these tools are, for example, Google Trends, which allows creating comparisons, statistics, etc., to develop reports based on the data and results this function shows us.
Another of these products that the large North American company makes available to information and communication professionals is something much more practical, such as the option to subscribe with Google Play or the free software solution Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).
2. Collaborations: Google announces on its website that it has allied with news organizations to respond to the challenges facing the communication industry. With these agreements, the company wants to strive to better understand the needs and threats this sector faces in order to offer better targeted and more effective solutions and, at the same time, promote joint and team work among different media.
3. Programs: Google has developed its own programs with which it wants to meet the needs of journalists and organizations dedicated to informing, aiming to help them succeed in the digital environment. These programs are grouped into three paths:
a. innovation (for a renewed sector),
b. training in the use of Google tools (to master the art of storytelling and report creation) and
c. research and knowledge (the company leads some investigations on matters essentially relevant to the future of journalism).
Controversy always shadows Google
All the great ones are exposed to controversy. We would dare to say that the seriousness and number of controversies is directly proportional to the turnover of the company, brand, or person in question. And in this case, we are talking, no more and no less, than Google. No further explanation needed. Let’s review some of its most recent controversial situations.
In recent years, this giant has been criticized for collaborating with censorship imposed by some governments by using location data for commercial purposes or even sharing it, in exchange for financial compensation, with other companies to then show advertising closely linked to our habits.
Likewise, after a probe by the news agency Associated Press and Princeton University, it was shown that Google continues tracking our location even forcing the option to disable our ‘location history’.
We don’t even have to leave our country to witness another controversial situation surrounding the tech company. On this occasion, Spanish newspapers sued Google for its platform Google News, claiming it appropriated information and that this could reduce visits to their online editions. The court ruling sided with the Spanish press and, since 2015, our country is the only one in Europe where Google News does not operate.
With all this, we see that the same entity that a few years ago had disputes with the journalism industry now seems to position itself as one of its saviors. Time will tell.
