The Trust Project

The Trust Project emerged in response to the decline in trust in news, the rise of mis- and disinformation online, the shift in news gatekeeping power from editors to platforms, and the drop in advertising revenues for independent journalism.

The initiative is based around a number of Trust Indicators®, which are standardised disclosures about a news outlet, its journalists, and the commitments behind the news outlet's work. These indicators are based on in-depth interviews with a diverse spectrum of the public who were asked what they look for in trusted media. Executives from more than 100 news outlets collaborated on developing and refining the disclosures.

For organisations that want to become part of The Trust Project, these indicators are used to inform the information they display on their news sites and their news-covering practices; they are meant to clearly distinguish trustworthy news from all the other kinds of information out there. Digital platforms, including Google, Facebook, and Bing, use the Trust Indicators®, and the machine-readable signals associated with them, in various ways to more easily surface, display, or label trustworthy news to their users. The Trust Project also works with advertising companies and media literacy efforts.

The following are the Trust Indicators® and some of the questions that need to be addressed and/or made public by news outlets in order to become part of the Trust Project:

• Best Practices: Who funds the site? What is its mission? What standards and ethics guide the process of gathering news? What happens if a journalist has ties to the topic covered?
• Journalist Expertise: Who made this? Are there details about the journalist, including contact information, areas of knowledge, and other stories they have worked on?
• Type of Work: What is this? Do you see story labels with clear definitions to distinguish opinion, analysis, and advertiser (or paid) content from news reports?
• References: What is the source? Does the site tell you where it got its information? For investigative, controversial, or in-depth stories, are you given access to the original materials behind the facts and assertions?
• Methods: Why was it a priority? For investigations, in-depth, or controversial stories, why did they pursue the topic? How did they go about the process?
• Locally Sourced: Do they know the community? Was the reporting done on the scene? Is there evidence of deep knowledge about the local situation or community?
• Diverse Voices: What are the newsroom's efforts and commitments to bring in diverse perspectives across social, ideological, and demographic differences? Are some communities or perspectives included only in stereotypical ways, or even completely missing?
• Actionable Feedback: What does the site do to engage your help in setting coverage priorities, asking good questions and finding the answers, holding powerful people and institutions accountable, and ensuring accuracy? Can you provide feedback that might provoke, alter, or expand a story?

Organisations that want to become part of The Trust Project and the consortium of news outlets that make up the project can sign up for an evaluation. Once they pass an initial review, the project works with them to implement the Trust Indicators®. It checks compliance on all approved news sites before they go live with the Trust Indicators® and rechecks them on an ad hoc basis. Approved and fully compliant sites can officially become a participant in the consortium and are able to use the Trust Mark logo, which publicly showcases an organisation's commitment to transparency, accuracy, inclusion, and fairness. As of 2023, the network consists of more than 300 news sites across 10 countries.

According to The Trust Project's philosophy, change cannot be achieved solely through a rating system - it requires a more collaborative and comprehensive approach. This is why the initiative's main goal is to help each partner organisation achieve high standards by offering dedicated trainings and expert support. The project is, therefore, not simply about assessment and compliance, but about the improvements that news organisations can make to be more transparent and accountable in their editorial, management, and financing processes. The Trust Project's vision is also one of user empowerment: The goal is to provide people with the tools to evaluate news integrity on their own and according to their own primary priorities among the 8 Trust Indicators®.

Click here for more information about The Trust Project.

Impact - examples:

• Across 2 surveys, Reach Plc (United Kingdom) found that trust in its flagship outlet, The Mirror, jumped 8% after it added the Trust Indicators® to its site.
• An experiment at UT-Austin's Center for Media Engagement found higher evaluations of a news organisation's reputation, including trustworthiness and reliability, when the Trust Indicators® were present. Thirty-three percent of participants said they were more willing to pay for news from a site that displayed the Trust Indicators®.
• A study by the University of Georgia's Digital Media Cognition Lab found that The Trust Project logo on news sites raised confidence in the site and its journalists, especially among users who were skeptical of news trustworthiness.
• The Trust Project executed a collaborative ad campaign on Microsoft platforms with 3 other organisations, offering ads with news literacy messages based on the 8 Trust Indicators®. Public ambassadors spread these messages, including the idea that we each play a role in a healthy news environment. The ads led to a quiz and interactive Trust Indicator page. Exposure to the Trust Indicators® achieved a 60% increase in participants' confidence to assess the reliability of news.

Research conducted by The Trust Project found that interviewees had become more engaged with news but that an "anxious middle" had emerged. Paying attention to the news was fraught with negative emotion because of fears about being tricked by false news reports and sites - and worries about accidentally sharing false news. The Trust Project considers this uncertain group to be at high risk of being converted to conspiracy theories and doubt, yet it also finds here an opportunity to cultivate resilience against disinformation. The Trust Project's news literacy campaigns seek to reach this "anxious middle" because they express interest in getting help navigating the news and could especially benefit from the Trust Indicators®.