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It’s no secret that over the past two decades, issues surrounding fake news, shoddy fact control, and rampant censorship have led many mainstream media to lose the trust of their viewers and readers.
In this regard, the Edelman Trust Barometer 2020 – a digital tool that acts as an indicator of how people view the media industry in general – shows that 57% of people around the world believe they cannot fully trust their own. media news sources, while 76% believe that false information is deliberately disseminated by various major print houses as a means of polarizing their viewers.
Similarly, according to a poll by Gallup and the Knight Foundation, nearly eight out of 10 Americans believe the mainstream media is actively trying to get them to adopt a certain political stance or opinion. Finally, according to another study published by data intelligence firm Morning Consult, a growing proportion of adults in the United States are losing faith in news affiliated with nine of the major American media outlets, such as CBS and The New York Times.
On November 4, the Associated Press began publishing the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election on the Ethereum and EOS blockchains using Everipedia’s OraQle software. Making use of such a new system, the AP has attempted to establish a permanent and unassailable record of the results for each state as they continue to arrive. The results can be viewed via blockchain explorers like Etherscan and EOS from the AP account on Bloks.io.
Previously, telecom giant Verizon announced the launch of its blockchain-based open source editorial product designed to increase the company’s overall corporate responsibility. The platform will immutably document the company’s various press releases, editorial articles and more using a public blockchain. The aforementioned press release, in fact, was published on the platform and subsequently modified – with the corrections duly accounted for by the system.
Speaking of the potential blockchain has to make journalism more credible, Saul Hudson, managing partner at strategic communications firm Angle42 and former CEO of the Americas at Reuters, told Cointelegraph:
“Too often, publications simply replace an article online by updating information that corrects an error in an earlier version without making it clear what has changed. Accuracy is the lifeblood of a media organization. It may seem counterintuitive, but being transparent about factual errors is a way to win public trust. “
Here’s how blockchain can fit into mainstream journalism
From the outside, it appears that blockchain has the potential to make journalists adhere to rigorous editorial standards, thanks in large part to the fundamental operational premise of the technology that is imbued with the principles of transparency.
For example, the tamper-proof aspect of most blockchain systems can help establish a transparency standard that will be needed to prove the authenticity of any image used in the news and to combat problems such as ‘deepfakes’.
Related: Deep truths of deepfakes: technology that can fool anyone
Likewise, blockchain systems can also help establish clear links for specific stories / news by creating an immutable database of articles that have been released by various media in relation to a particular piece since its initial circulation.
Providing her thoughts on how blockchain-enabled news platforms can completely overhaul the traditional structures of how news is curated and disseminated for public consumption, Nisa Amoils, a Forbes associate and managing partner of venture capital firm Grasshopper Capital, has told Cointelegraph that such platforms can potentially provide the technology foundation that may be needed for direct journalistic funding:
“These platforms may exist outside of traditional funding models, thus allowing journalists more freedom to pursue stories that deserve reporting. They can also archive stories, as blockchain technology has the inherent advantage of permanence. “
He further noted that through the use of smart contracts, fact checking could become more automated and blockchain systems could even act as secure records for important metadata, such as the time a story was published, subtitles, tags, etc. .
Finally, speaking of the monetization aspect of blockchain-based journalism, Sarah Austin, a regular contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine and chief marketing officer at Kava – a decentralized bank for digital assets – told Cointelegraph that Steemit is an example of how journalists can get paid to contribute their content: “Community-generated content suggestions were first popularized by PayPal’s first Tip Jar product that catapulted the concept of content tipping. Writers nowadays. and journalists can be tipped for social media content in cryptocurrencies. “
Resistance towards technology is bound to arise
Earlier this year, in April, Italy’s leading news agency, Ansa, announced that it has created a unique blockchain-based news tracking system so that readers can verify the origin of any news that has appeared on any of the company’s various multimedia platforms.
The goal of the entire operation was to strengthen the bonds of trust “between his [Ansa’s] organization and its readers and customers. “While blockchain can play an important role in generating positive public sentiment by ensuring that authenticated news articles and images are spread across the web in a totally unmanipulable way, Hudson believes change may be slow in coming:
“Many media outlets will resist blockchain innovation due to fear of the costs associated with an unknown technology. This is why we are seeing the industry tackle low-flow fruit first. The biggest hurdle the media industry faces is not technical but cultural. Consumers have become so isolated in the way news is filtered for them that they often refuse to even contemplate that a different perspective could be anything other than fake news. “
A similar view is shared by Amolis, which believes that blockchain technology’s forced transparency and data freezing offers may not be able to garner any major tangible support, at least in the foreseeable future.
Use the blockchain to move forward
Blockchain technology, with its immutable and transparent ledger, can help make the global media industry behave more responsibly. For example, verified journalists can be entered into a blockchain database, potentially in the form of non-fungible tokens, to prove their identity. In this regard, Wong Yun Han, partner of The Block School – a provider of blockchain education and training – pointed out that the technology can address plagiarism, another problem currently affecting the journalistic world:
“If the news content is placed on a decentralized system and there is a ‘Turnitin’ equivalent for the blockchain media industry, we can verify the originality of the articles. It’s not just about making journalism more transparent, blockchain technology also has the potential to democratize and incentivize transparency and engagement for journalism. “
With platforms like Everipedia and Steemit – where users are provided with incentives for their contributions – slowly gaining mainstream traction, it will be interesting to see how quickly the media will start considering the option of incorporating blockchain-based systems into their existing editorial frameworks. .
Finally, the Content Authenticity Initiative, or CAI, recently published the white paper for its new digital platform which aims to provide trust and transparency to photojournalists, publishers and content consumers. According to the document, any individual can use a CAI-enabled device to capture images whose details – such as paternity, geolocation, time, file storage preference, etc. – they are automatically recorded in a secure and transparent data register. As a result, any attribution issues that might arise at a later stage are resolved almost instantly.
