Kip Currier: I just heard veteran journalist Steve Brill talking about a new information assessment tool called NewsGuard on MSNBC program Andrea Mitchell Reports. Brill delivered this money quote on how NewsGuard provides evaluation of often-visited Internet sites by human (translation: not AI!) experts:
"That's what librarians have been doing since the invention of the library."
--Steve Brill, August 24, 2018,
Andrea Mitchell Reports Program, MSNBC
Andrea Mitchell Reports Program, MSNBC
[Excerpt]
"The patchwork nature of promoting trustworthy sources online has had the unintended consequence of seeding fears of bias.
That's one reason why a group of journalists and media executives are launching a tool called NewsGuard,
a browser plug-in for Chrome and Microsoft Edge that transcends
platforms, giving trustworthiness ratings to most of the internet's
top-trafficked sites. Those ratings are based on assessments from an
actual newsroom of dozens of reporters who comprise NewsGuard's staff.
They hail from a range of news organizations, including New York Daily News and GQ. Together, they've spent the last several months scoring thousands of news sites."
