At a time when data breach and proliferation of fake news is widespread, Google has announced News Initiative Training in India in partnership with DataLeads, BoomLive and Internews.
Under this initiative, Google News Training Network will select 200 journalists from cities across India who will be given five-day training in boot camps that will be organised in English and six other languages.
The programme is meant to equip journalist with best skills that can guard them against falling prey to false news.
Irene Jay Liu, Google News Lab Lead, Asia-Pacific said, Supporting trusted, authoritative media sources is a top priority for Google, which is why we are proud to collaborate with Internews, DataLeads and BoomLive to support journalists in their fight against misinformation in India.
Training workshops will be conducted in Hindi, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, English, Marathi and Kannada as informed by Google in India.
The training will focus on areas such as fact checking, online verification and digital hygiene for journalists via a planned curriculum set by experts from AltNews, FirstDraft, BoomLive, Storyful, DataLeads.
“Our goal is to train more than 200 trainers, who will then train 8,000 journalists in six languages over the next year, making this Google’s largest training network in the world,” Liu added.