News – from papers to television to social media channels – constitute a major portion of our daily life. Every now and then, we come across pieces of information that flash on our screen or are communicated to us by our friends and peers. We often happen to simply consume much of the information, lest there is something to gawk and gossip about. But how many times do we stop to verify the authenticity of the news item? How many times do we question the veracity of the statements presented in the news, or very much the origin of the news piece? The responsibility of verifying news rests as much on us as the curiosity to consume more and more information.
Fake news is a huge headache for any civilized society, which intends to maintain law and order in its daily operations. Moreover, fake news can also disparage someone or allege someone’s involvement in incidents or claims that one has never been a party to. Forged news is a threat to the social fabric and the moral compass of a society. And with increasing number of websites, blogs and social media handles coming up, people can no longer blindly trust any random piece of information. This necessitates technological interventions in the area of news provenance and verification. Blockchain can enter as the most promising candidate to solve this problem.
Stakeholders in the process
Transforming a piece information into news involves several stakeholders. The journalists are the primary source of information. They are the ones who visit the locations of action and gather information by delving deep into the matters, thereby helping in first level of interpretation of events. Yes, there is interpretation involved here, since every journalist perceives an event differently and when penning down one’s thoughts and observations, a slight subjective bias does creep in. Therefore, this is the first level of interpretation where information or analysis may get tampered, thereby giving a slightly different picture as compared to the reality.
New agencies are the next stakeholders as they publish the news reports from their journalists and spread the news to the public. They pass on the news to writers, bloggers and editors to work on the pieces of information and weave them into a readable version of news. This again adds layers of interpretation and subjective perceptions to the news. The writers and editors may have their own prejudices and therefore, their biases can creep inside the news article. Once these news items are read by a gullible audience, they end up being informed not of the actual news, but of the predispositions of the editors. Therefore, news items need to be thoroughly scrutinized to ensure we don’t have spokesperson’s talking to us, but only the truth.
The readers are also a crucial stakeholder in the entire process as they are the consumers of the information and the ones who act on it. They are the ones who can choose to blindly follow what the editor presents to them, or to scrutinize the information at their disposal.
Decentralized verification of news
Now that we know how fake news can propagate in the formal news publication process, we also cannot ignore the fact that some unscrupulous entities also fabricate fake news items or present twisted interpretations as expert opinions. Such pieces of information are dangerous for the social fabric and also the people who are brought into spotlight through false allegations.
Blockchain can do wonders to the media sector by bringing data provenance and verification control to the stakeholders. The process is simple to understand. Once a journalist gathers bits and pieces of information, she uploads all the recorded data on a ledger with one’s name, location and signature added to it. The images and videos uploaded will also carry the timestamp, geo-location stamp, license, work permit and news agency affiliation. This will bring in data provenance to the process, wherein any stakeholder can verify at any point of time the origin and creator of an asset.
Once the assets have been received by the news agency, the latter can share the pieces of information with the editors and the writers of news articles. While sharing the block with editors and writers, the news agency adds its own signatures, company name, license information, work permit and year of being in operation. The freelance and employed writers and editors can check for these parameters for verification of the source of information, and accordingly decide whether to work on it or not.
Next, once the article has been written, it will be published on to the blockchain with the details of the writer, editor and drafting date recorded. Email ID, contact details, work experience and certifications will be added along. The backend verification system checks for the authenticity of the editor details and scrutinizes the credentials of the people behind the news item. Once added as a block in the Verification Pipeline Ledger, a Smart Contract kicks in and notifies addition of a pending item to all the Community Auditors. The Community Auditors is a group of people independent of the news agencies, who work as freelancers to verify the authenticity of a news article. The better the credential of the editor or news agency, the fewer the number of Community Auditors required.
The auditors either approve the news item or disapprove of it. In case of a disapproval, the comments on dissent are notified to all auditors, so as to encourage immediate necessary action. Once the appropriate number of approvals are received, the details of approvers/auditors is added to the block and the smart contract pushes the block to Publication Pipeline ledger. From there, each news item gets published on a timely basis.
Sometimes, auditors may not be available on the distributed ledger. This is where the ledger can send the unpublished news articles in mail with a QR code assigned to them. The QR codes will reveal the traceability details once the auditors scan them.
Forensics to become easier
In case fake news still makes its way to the publications, the forensics teams can spring into action and easily trace the news item back to the editors, news agency and the journalists. This eases the process of data traceability and provenance. Moreover, any incidence of fake news will lead to loss of position in the Trust Index of the news agencies and editors. This will mean that the next time they publish some news item, it will go through more number of auditors and the smart contracts will necessitate higher number of approvals, which can lead to delay in publication. No news agency would like to be delayed with their publication, while their rival firms take a lead on the same news item. Therefore, this process will bring in behavioral change in the editors and the news agencies, and will incentivize good behavior in the media space.
Final thoughts
It is necessary for the media industry to get into action and implement technological interventions for putting an end to fake news. The crooked parties who fabricate such fake news items have all the malicious intentions and make their cock-and-bull story a medium to garner viewership from readers, with utter disregard to the harm they are doing to the largely gullible world. Decentralization of information verification is the key to resolving these issues and blockchain holds a wonderful promise in this area.
