Reuters is examining a peer-to-peer network for collaboration, fact checking

Reuters plans to introduce a “peer-to-peer network” to help journalists collaborate on stories and help each other fact check claims, reports Charlotte Tobitt of the Press Gazette.

Tobitt reports, “The biggest challenges to Reuters and many other news organisations right now, according to Brooks, are trust issues caused by so-called ‘fake news,’ and changing consumer habits, especially among the under-30s.

“An Ofcom survey published last month, found that half of all UK adults now get their news through social media, and although TV remains the most popular platform for news its use has dropped from 79 per cent to 75 per cent in the past year.

“The largest growing platform for social media use for news in the past year is Whatsapp (nine per cent in 2019 up from five per cent in 2018), according to the annual Reuters Digital News Report.

“Brooks said this also posed problems of trust, adding: ‘If it’s a closed group the echo chamber is even more astute because it is less likely to be challenged.'”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.