Twitter will collaborate with the Associated Press (AP) and Reuters to provide quickly credible information on its platform in order to battle fake news and misinformation.
How will it work?
Twitter in its statement said it will use insights from the agencies to verify and explain why a topic is trending and attach context in the form of a tweet or a short description. Through the partnership, people can expect more trends with contextual descriptions and links to reporting from trusted sources more frequently.
Earlier this year, the microblogging platform had launched a program called Birdwatch. In the program, it asked users to help identify and fact-check misleading tweets.
First formal partnership
This is the first time Twitter had formally partnered with news organizations to elevate accurate information on its site. The company’s spokesperson said Twitter will work separately with both AP and Reuters. A division of information services company Thomson Reuters and the Newswires will not interact with each other.
News Organisations’ response
Hazel Baker, Global head of UGC (user-generated content) newsgathering at Reuters said, “Trust, accuracy, and impartiality are at the heart of what Reuters does every day. Those values also drive our commitment to stopping the spread of misinformation.”
Tom Januszewski, Vice President of global business development at the AP said, “We are particularly excited about leveraging AP’s scale and speed to add content to online conversations, which can benefit from easy access to the facts.”
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