News outlets should get ‘nutrition labels’, says Cambridge Disinformation Summit speaker

The Cambridge Disinformation Summit, which takes place on July 27 and 28, will consider the societal damage caused by online disinformation.

The inaugural event takes up the challenge to identify the causes of disinformation, and suggest ways to confront and regulate the way disinformation is created. It will also consider its appeal – the psychological reasoning that takes place among those who ingest disinformation, and why some people are so affected by it.

Veena McCoole is VP of communications and marketing at NewsGuard, which verifies the trustworthiness of news organisations across the globe.

She is on the panel for a session at 9.30am on the Friday (July 28) titled ‘Profiteering: the business of disinformation’. The King’s College Hall session will discuss the financial and power incentives from disinformation and which actors engage in disinformation for profit. She kindly agreed to respond to questions put by the Cambridge Independent.

How is disinformation created?

“A major new source of disinformation that we have observed, linked to AI, is the rise of ‘unreliable AI-generated news sites’ (UAINs).

“To date, we have identified 277 UAINs. These websites typically have generic names, such as iBusiness Day, Ireland Top News, and Daily Time Update, which to a consumer appear to be established news sites. This obscures that the sites operate with little to no human oversight and publish articles written largely or entirely by bots – rather than presenting traditionally created and edited journalism, with human oversight.

“The sites have churned out dozens and in some cases hundreds of generic articles, about a range of subjects including politics, technology, entertainment, and travel. The articles have sometimes included false claims, such as celebrity death hoaxes, fabricated events, and articles presenting old events as if they just occurred.

“Unless brands take steps to exclude untrustworthy sites, their ads will continue to appear on these types of sites, creating an economic incentive for their creation at scale.”

Is there currently any effective regulation of disinformation?

“One example of a self-regulatory tool that tech platforms have signed up to is the EU Commission’s Code of Practice on Disinformation. NewsGuard became a signatory of the code at the EU Commission’s request.”

How does NewsGuard fit into this picture?

“NewsGuard provides transparent tools to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies. Our global team of misinformation experts and trained journalists produce ‘reliability ratings’ for the news websites that account for at least 95 per cent of online engagement with the news in each of our nine markets (US, UK, parts of Europe, Canada, Australia and NZ).

“Our ratings score news and information websites on nine weighted apolitical criteria of journalistic practice. Each rating is supplemented by a detailed, transparently-sourced nutrition label that outlines the evidence gathered for each website rating, that includes any engagement and calls for comment our analysts have made to the site’s editorial leadership. These nutrition labels enable readers and partners to understand the rationale behind every rating, consult all the evidence gathered by our analysts and make their own informed decisions about whether to trust a given source.

“We believe that by providing consumers with source context and credibility information while they are browsing social media platforms or search engine results, they can make better informed decisions about which sources adhere to their own standards of transparency and credibility. By empowering end users rather than blocking access to information, NewsGuard aims to improve media literacy and information resilience without censorship.”

The full schedule for the Cambridge Disinformation Summit is available here.