verification
Jenni Sargent founded First Draft in 2015 and has since been devising initiatives to support organisations that tackle the challenges of trust and truth online.
Deepfakes – doctored videos fabricating footage of what looks like real people – have been around for years. But the journalism community is now starting to take seriously their potential to damage trust in the media and democracy.
Many journalists and publishers are struggling to get to grips with blockchain.
To explain it in simple terms, blockchain is a growing list of records – called blocks – which are encrypted and linked. Each block also contains a timestamp and other information about the origin of data. By design, a blockchain is resistant to modification of the data it contains, which may come in handy when we need to protect news content from tampering or even censorship.
With just under two weeks to go to our first ‘in focus’ event on social media newsgathering and verification, Journalism.co.uk is pleased to announce the final programme for the day, including new speakers from Reuters and The Associated Press.
Joining our expert line-up will be: John Pullman, global head of pictures and video at Reuters; George Sargent, social media producer at Reuters; Beth Colson, head of news production, international video, at The Associated Press; and Matt Cooke, UK, Ireland and Nordics lead at News Lab, Google, who is kindly sponsoring the event.
The half-day conference will take a detailed look at the questions surrounding eyewitness media search and verification, taking place on Wednesday 21 October at Reuters in Canary Wharf, London.
With only one month to go to news:rewired ‘in focus’, our half-day conference taking an in-depth look at social media newsgathering and verification, we’re delighted to announce more speakers who will be joining our expert line-up on 21 October.
Gavin Rees, the director of Dart Centre Europe, runs workshops and discussion groups on trauma awareness, resilience and interviewing skills for working journalists in a range of countries around the world. Gavin will be joining the ‘Wild West of social media’ panel alongside Aine Kerr, managing editor of Storyful, and Sam Dubberley, co-founder of the Eyewitness Media Hub.
And Mark Frankel, assistant editor, UGC and social news, at the BBC, will lead a practical workshop in the second half of the event, giving us an insight into the BBC’s social media newsgathering process.
Social media and mobile devices have irrevocably changed the news landscape, and now members of the public are often at the scene of a news event before a reporter even hears of the story.
Pictures and video posted to social media by eyewitness might be the first sign, but how can journalists and newsrooms reach these sources quickly, reliably and ethically?
The first ‘news:rewired in focus‘ event will take a detailed look at these questions surrounding social media newsgathering and verification, scheduled for Wednesday 21 October at Thomson Reuters in Canary Wharf, London.
Tickets are now available, with the first 50 available at a discounted rate of just £60 +VAT until Friday 28 August, after which prices will rise to £80 +VAT.
Claire Wardle, director of news service at Storyful, told news:rewired in London today that verification of digital material was a case of ‘putting the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together’.
A live blog from the verification workshop featured during the news:rewired conference in London today
Scoopshot will sponsor news:rewired, and join the verification workshop alongside Storyful’s Claire Wardle.
Scoopshot helps news outlets collect images from the crowd, with users able to download Scoopshot’s app and then receive image-related tasks from the media.
Scoopshot’s vice president Eric Siereveld will join the verification workshop, in which he will discuss Scoopshot’s own authenticity tools for its clients. Journalism.co.uk reported on how Scoopshot handles verification last year.
The verification workshop is also being run by Storyful’s director of news services Claire Wardle, who will outline some of the key verification tools and techniques, to ensure news outlets are able to separate fact from fiction, often in breaking news events.
Tickets to news:rewired are still available for just £130 +VAT, although spaces are limited. You can also find the agenda and list of speakers confirmed so far online.
A key issue facing journalists on a daily basis when working on any platform is how to verify information they are receiving. When it comes to working online the need to verify content shared on social media and other forms of user generated content sumbitted online remains just as important. At news:rewired – full stream […]