News & Information Integrity & Trust
Can anyone trust anything that is being broadcast as “News” anymore? With the lines between marketing, influence, opinion, and news all becoming so blurred, how does anyone know who or what to trust?
News consumers are quickly loosing confidence in government and the press. Agendas and bias or so pervasive that the public knows it and does not want to be manipulated. So, maybe we should turn to social media? Maybe it’s better over there? Oh my gosh! No! It’s even worse over there.
These problems intensify when it comes to topics that matter. Slanted and opinionated reporting is the norm when dealing with the concentration of money and power. The good news is that blockchain may be a solution on the way. The bad news is blockchain and cryptocurrency reporting are also filled with the media hype.
Media hype and misinformation are rampant in the blockchain field. Most of the “Experts” are people who made their fortunes in the traditional currency markets. They know very little about this new domain (not many of us do). However, they are brandished as the experts because of their success in the legacy economy. Add to that, snake-oil salesmen who want to make some quick money, telling you that their ICO is going to stop the oceans from rising, cure all diseases, and end world-hunger.
So, where do people go who just want the truth, and some good, honest, objective analysis? To answer this question, we need to know two things. First, who can we trust? Second, how do we know we can trust them? These are some of the questions that the GBA Public Sector Data Integrity Project is going to try to tackle. This will not be an easy task. We are currently looking at this from a few angles including:
- Creating a list of trusted news sources
- Developing journalistic standards for news confidence &
- Monitoring and reporting violations of news integrity issues in an objective, fact-based system.
While these goals may be challenging and take a while to figure out, we have started by establishing a GBA News & Information Directory. For now, we are only going to list organizations that have not violated our trust for news and reporting. As we build a news and confidence system, we will incorporate it into this directory.
We would love to get your input on this project, so please leave your comments below.
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