Google backs non-profit Internews with $1 mn to further news literacy in India

US technology giant Google will contribute $1 million to Internews, a global non-profit organisation which is slated to launch a news literacy initiative in India, the company said in a statement.

The funding is part of a $10 million commitment by Google.org’, in collaboration with Google News Initiative (GNI), towards global media literacy, the statement said.  

Internews plans to have a team of 250 contributors which would primarily consist of journalists, non-profit workers, fact checkers and academicians. The team will be trained on a curriculum developed by global experts. The training will be adapted to the local needs and be available in seven languages.

This team will successively pass on the training to newer internet audiences in non-metro cities, educating them to better navigate and assess the information they find online. 

Internews have sent out invitations to journalists, community workers and academicians to participate in the programme. 

GNI India Training Network, which is initiating the programme in partnership with Internews, was launched in 2018 and claims to have since provided in-depth verification training to about 15,000 journalists and students across 875-plus organisations, in 10 Indian languages. With a ‘train-the-trainer’ approach, the network now intends to extend the training to the communities post growing allegations of misinformation during the general elections in the country last year.

Recently, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberh shifted the onus of fact-checking to the general public, “People should decide what is credible news and not the tech companies,” he said in a speech.