May 3, 2023 marks the thirtieth anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, a chance to concentrate on the state of impartial journalism and rules of press freedom all over the world. Local impartial journalism informs and educates residents, exposes injustice and wrongdoing and encourages civic engagement, all of that are important to democracy and to defending folks’s basic rights. Today we’re launching the Microsoft Journalism Hub, a useful resource middle constructed to attach the journalism group extra seamlessly with instruments, expertise, providers, and associate applications designed to help their distinctive enterprise wants. These assets are distributed throughout Microsoft’s three journalism initiative commitments: rebuilding capability in native information ecosystems; restoring belief in information; and decreasing authorized and cyber dangers for journalists.
Around the world there are rising threats to a free and impartial press. The rise of authoritarianism in lots of areas across the globe, the rise in digital, authorized, and bodily threats concentrating on journalists, and the continued decline of the normal media enterprise mannequin are only a few of the true, daunting challenges dealing with the media trade immediately.
Today’s Hub launch follows Microsoft’s not too long ago introduced plan to construct a Media Viability Accelerator, a web-based platform developed in partnership with Internews, a nonprofit that helps impartial media in 100 nations, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Media Viability Accelerator is meant to assist information media grow to be extra financially sustainable by accessing options and market insights to tell efficient enterprise methods.
Rebuilding Capacity in Local News Ecosystems
Rebuilding reporting capability is crucial as evidenced by the over 35,000 newspaper reporter jobs which were misplaced within the US alone since 2010. To create a enterprise mannequin that’s efficient in immediately’s more and more digitized setting and financial system, the journalism trade wants entry to instruments that help the expansion of a sustainable enterprise. In addition to our ongoing help for native information pilots throughout the US, the Microsoft Journalism Hub gives entry to instruments comparable to Microsoft 365 for Journalists which might improve the effectivity and attain of a newsroom with apps and instruments to enhance analysis, reporting and different editorial wants. The web page additionally gives free coaching for information visualization instruments, and AI-enabled instruments for publishers, in addition to free LinkedIn entry to Premium stage LinkedIn for Journalists content material together with trainings for journalists. It additionally consists of free expertise and custom-built software program options by means of varied presents on the Microsoft Nonprofits web page.
Restoring Trust in News
Trust within the information, as with most different establishments, is in decline. Studies present, nonetheless, that an knowledgeable and significant reader is healthier geared up to determine authoritative content material and extra probably to have the ability to detect and reject disinformation and international propaganda. For this motive, it’s important to promote digital media literacy training that gives the framework for locating, consuming, and sharing trusted, fact-based information and knowledge. The Hub consists of further instruments designed to assist journalists restore reader belief.
Publishers can entry trustworthiness indicator instruments by submitting their websites for overview by means of companions like NewsGuard, a writer ranking system that critiques websites primarily based on their adherence to 9 journalistic standards. These scores are utilized by advertisers and types to gauge the trustworthiness of a web site. The Hub additionally consists of help assets comparable to Reporters Without Borders’ Journalist Trust Initiative program, a certification program that promotes and rewards compliance with journalistic norms and ethics. Microsoft gives sponsored entry to this system to assist newsrooms improve their belief indicators to readers by following the important thing elements of journalistic integrity.
We know that the integrity of Microsoft’s personal information merchandise is strengthened when small and native information sources are prevalent. This Hub additionally permits newsrooms to join distribution on Microsoft Start (our Microsoft News platform).
In a world the place readers can not at all times belief what they see, the Hub additionally consists of details about Content Provenance. When content material provenance requirements are utilized to photographs, movies, and audio information, viewers have extra details about whether or not the content material is genuine or if it has beforehand been altered. With the rise of AI-generated photos and manipulated media, these requirements are a key software for constructing and sustaining reader belief, in addition to the well being of the knowledge ecosystem extra broadly.
Reducing Legal and Cyber Risks
Journalists all over the world are more and more topic to bodily, cyber, and authorized assaults – particularly reporters masking battle, governmental abuses, and corruption. To improve their security, cloud computing, AI, cyber protections, and pro-bono authorized help applications are essential instruments.
Through the Hub, customers can study methods to enroll in AccountGuard for Journalists, a free cybersecurity service accessible to Microsoft 365 media prospects. Users may even have the ability to acquire no-cost authorized assist with prepublication overview and public information entry by means of ProJourn, based by Microsoft in partnership with Davis Wright Tremaine, The Knight Foundation, and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The Hub additionally consists of entry to Thompson Reuters Foundation’s Trust Law program, a program that gives free authorized help to media organizations all over the world.
New Collaborations to Support Journalism Around the World
Supporting use of AI in Small Newsrooms – NOTA
Today, we’re additionally sharing that we are actually working with Nota, an organization targeted on constructing AI instruments that optimize the publishing course of for newsrooms. This consists of utilizing AI to enhance web optimization, create movies of printed tales, and write marketable headlines.
Their instruments additionally assist publishers, journalists, and viewers groups concentrate on creating significant content material with higher effectivity utilizing much less assets. We’re enthusiastic about the way forward for AI and what it means for journalism and can proceed to help organizations which are utilizing AI instruments to help native media, and construct newsroom capability to make use of them.
Supporting Investigative Journalism in Ukraine – Kyiv Independent
Nowhere is the menace to journalists extra evident than for these reporting on the frontlines of conflict. Building on the broad help Microsoft has supplied to Ukraine and its residents, we’re proud to help these reporters sharing the tales of the conflict every day. Recently, we partnered with the Kyiv Independent and onboarded them on to the Microsoft Start information platform, enormously rising the attain of their tales. In addition, now we have been supporting the work of our associate Report for the World to construct a community of potential information companions within the area together with the Kyiv Independent, ABO, Hromadaske, Slidstvo.information, StopFake and Ukrainer. Finally, now we have invested within the enlargement of the Kyiv Independent’s War Crimes Investigative Unit to permit for extra in-depth reporting on the influence of the conflict together with potential conflict crimes and violations of worldwide regulation.
At Microsoft, World Press Freedom Day serves as a reminder of our dedication to empower and help journalists all over the world. Through our safety providers, expertise, assets, and protections, Microsoft is dedicated to persevering with to defend media freedom as a core pillar of democracy and of defending folks’s basic rights.
To entry all the Microsoft Journalism Hub instruments and assets, click on right here. To study our broader Journalism work at Microsoft, click on right here.