02/07/2023
NewsGuard Announces DCMS-Funded Media Literacy Project Supporting Ageing-Focused Charities and the Elderly Population
(London — February 7, 2023) NewsGuard announced that it is one of 13 recipients of the UK Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) Media Literacy Programme Fund, which will support the rollout of NewsGuard’s UK-wide program designed to bolster media literacy in elderly populations, build resilience to online misinformation, and increase support for vulnerable internet users.
As part of its project, NewsGuard will partner with civil society organizations, grassroots nonprofits, ageing-focused charities, and community support groups serving the elderly to deliver media literacy training for staff members, carers, and the old age community. By facilitating access at no cost to users to its tool offering Reliability Ratings for the top sources of news and information accessed online by people in the U.K. NewsGuard will help staff and volunteers field questions about the reliability of information, offer advice, and handle concerns around misinformation.
“The internet offers countless benefits for older people, but with the rise of dangerous disinformation online, it is important that they have the knowledge and skills required to avoid being deceived,” said Paul Scully, Minister for Tech and Digital Economy at DCMS. “Through our Media Literacy Programme Fund, we’re proud to support NewsGuard’s excellent scheme which will provide vital training on how to spot this content and build resilience and awareness of online threats among elderly communities.”
Today also marks the 20th anniversary of Safer Internet Day, an annual campaign organized by Insafe, a European network of Safer Internet Centres, to promote educational resources and events around the world that help people to make the best use of online technology.
“We are eager to help the U.K. government deliver on its online media literacy strategy, and work alongside DCMS to protect the most vulnerable populations in the country from the pervasive and ever changing threats of misinformation,” said Veena McCoole, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at NewsGuard. “We know that digital inclusion initiatives for the elderly cover topics such as online banking and online shopping, but many programmes omit crucial education on navigating the overwhelming landscape of news and information. We look forward to widening access to our journalist-vetted data and offering workshops and training on how to avoid misinformation.”
Thanks to support from DCMS, NewsGuard is offering partner organizations:
- Free access to NewsGuard’s browser extension providing Reliability Ratings of news sources for the elderly and their carers
- Training for staff, volunteers, and the elderly on how to use NewsGuard’s browser extension to stay protected from misinformation when browsing online
- Tailored media literacy training sessions on identifying and combating misinformation, run by our expert journalists
- Educational resources to improve resilience to and awareness of the pervasive issue of misinformation, which disproportionately impacts vulnerable populations such as the elderly
This initiative sponsored by the U.K. government represents an important expansion of NewsGuard’s media literacy efforts, which also include work with public libraries, schools, and young people embarking on their first research projects using the internet. NewsGuard offers access to its browser extension to more than 800 public libraries around the world thanks to its news literacy partnership with Microsoft, and individual schools and universities can license access at a highly discounted rate.
By developing new educational materials on media literacy for an older audience during the course of this project, NewsGuard expects to expand its efforts to serve elderly populations across the eight other countries it operates in outside of the U.K.
U.K.-based civil society organizations, grassroots nonprofits, ageing-focused charities, and community support groups serving the elderly that are interested in benefiting from NewsGuard’s educational webinars, interactive workshops, training materials, and browser extension — all at no cost — should reach out to veena.mccoole@newsguardtech.com.
About NewsGuard
Launched in March 2018 by media entrepreneur and award-winning journalist Steven Brill and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz, NewsGuard provides credibility ratings and detailed “Nutrition Labels” for thousands of news and information websites. NewsGuard rates all the news and information websites that account for 95% of online engagement across the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, France, and Italy. In August 2022, NewsGuard also launched in Austria. NewsGuard products include NewsGuard, BrandGuard, which helps marketers concerned about their brand safety, and the Misinformation Fingerprints catalog of top hoaxes.
In 2022, NewsGuard began rating television news and information programs and networks using criteria similar to those used to score websites but adapted for the video medium. NewsGuard’s TV ratings are the first to go beyond its initial ratings of websites. Ratings for news and information podcasts will also be available for licensing in 2023.
NewsGuard’s ratings are conducted by trained journalists using apolitical criteria of journalistic practice.
NewsGuard’s ratings and Nutrition Labels are licensed by browsers, news aggregators, education companies, and social media and search platforms to make NewsGuard’s information about news websites available to their users. Consumers can also access NewsGuard’s website ratings by purchasing a subscription to NewsGuard, which costs $4.95/month, €4.95/month or £4.95/month, and includes access to NewsGuard’s browser extension for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox and its mobile app for iOS and Android. The extension is available for free on Microsoft’s Edge browser through a license agreement with Microsoft. Hundreds of public libraries globally receive free access to use NewsGuard’s browser extension on their public-access computers to give their patrons more context for the news they encounter online. For more information, including to download the browser extension and review the ratings process, visit newsguardtech.com.