From the East to West Coast, Millions of Dollars Pour Into News Literacy Initiatives

INFO WARS: “Is Truth Dead?” That was the question ominously posed, in bright red letters against a black background, on a haunting Time Magazine cover last month. The quick answer: not so fast. In recent months tech industry leaders, academic institutions, non-profits and other organizations are joining forces with millions of dollars in hopes to restore the public’s faith in news.

One such effort is the Ne ws Integrity Initiative , announced by the City of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism earlier this week. The global group is specifically focused building news literally for digital outlets “to increase trust in journalism around the world, and to better inform the public conversation.”

“Improving news literacy is a global concern, and this diverse group assembled by CUNY brings together experts from around the world to work toward building more informed communities,” said Campbell Brown, Facebook’s Head of News Partnerships, in a statement. Facebook is just one of the partners putting together this $14 million-dollar fund. Others supporters include the Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund, the Ford Foundation, the Democracy Fund, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Tow Foundation, AppNexus, Mozilla and Betaworks.

Also this week, the founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar (also the founder of the Omidyar Network), announced that the Omidyar Network would be donating $100 million to support investigative journalism, fight misinformation and counter hate-speech. According to the Washington Post, the group will start with a $4.5 million donation to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the group that released the Panama Papers back in 2016. (Disclosure: Omidyar Network is an investor in EdSurge.)