As the 2020 election draws closer and closer, broadcasters across the country are bolstering their fact-checking operations -- and Graham Media Group is among them.
In fact, Graham Media Group was recognized in a recent TV News Check article for the company's Trust Index, the initiative and verification system to combat misinformation campaigns that target local media.
Trust Index was created out of a partnership with Fathm, a global leader in the fight against misinformation. Since the start of the year, Graham Media Group has been working with Fergus Bell, Fathm’s founder and CEO, in conjunction with newsroom leadership, to train the company's journalists to identify and stop the spread of misinformation.
“The misinformation tactics we saw in the 2016 election have evolved, so we need to ensure we’re constantly updating our strategies for dealing with this challenge,” Bell said in the article. “Journalists at Graham stations now have even more robust and versatile verification and fact-checking processes that can just as easily deal with pandemics as with election coverage. To be able to engage with audiences on this issue at such a local level is really exciting.”
Here's how Trust Index is designed to work: Viewer inquiries trigger news stories, with Graham Media Group reporters working through the Trust Index protocols to produce the report. Graham Media Group reporters also generate their own ideas as for what they can debunk.
Since launching in February, the group has fielded more than 400 tips from consumers, GMG audience development lead Dustin Block said.
Sometimes, the ideas can work across multiple markets. For example, in August, KSAT-TV in San Antonio broadcast a Trust Index-branded report about “pink slime” local news websites, which are automated sites crafted to look like legitimate news organizations. In fact, these have roughly tripled in number in 2020.
KSAT’s reporting revealed that a Delaware-based company called Metric Media had constructed 56 websites that appear to cover news across the state of Texas.
The pink slime exposé idea originated in the Detroit market, making its way south via the Graham Trust Index system.
“What’s come out of it has been some of the best journalism,” said Catherine Badalamente, VP and chief innovation officer at Graham Media Group, referencing the Bell training and the Trust Index, as she says in the article. “That’s one of the things that makes me so proud.”
Graham Media Group is committed to distributing truth. This collective effort proves that.
When people accuse news groups, even in a joking way, with purposefully spreading false information on a wide scale, “it instantaneously makes me furious," Badalamente said. “If they only knew how serious these newsrooms take their job, and how serious we as an organization take what we do, in terms of serving our community. We need to do a better job of combating it, and … take the power of our airwaves and reinforce why we’re not like everyone else.”
