11/20/2019
Swisher Community Library Joins NewsGuard in News Literacy Partnership
Patrons at the library can now see reliability ratings of news sources they encounter while using library computers, making it the first library in Iowa to join NewsGuard’s global News Literacy Partnership Program
(SWISHER, IOWA – Nov. 20, 2019) As Swisher residents look ahead to the 2020 presidential election and the Iowa caucuses in February, the Swisher Community Library is offering patrons a tool to help them vet their news sources and spot misinformation.
The library is collaborating with NewsGuard, a new venture founded by veteran journalists, to provide its media literacy browser extension on all computers at the library. With NewsGuard’s browser extension installed, library patrons have access to credibility ratings and “Nutrition Label” reviews of thousands of news and information websites, which show up next to links in search results and on social media feeds.
“It can be difficult to judge the quality of the news on websites; information comes so fast and can be so attractively packaged,” said Laura Hoover, librarian at the Swisher Library. “And it is not just politics, but health news, sports, entertainment, and even local news sites can be misleading. We always want to help our patrons find their way to reliable sources, be it printed materials or on the web.”
NewsGuard analysts, who are trained journalists with varied backgrounds, rate websites based on nine binary, apolitical criteria of journalistic practice, including whether a site repeatedly publishes false content, regularly corrects or clarifies errors, avoids deceptive headlines, and whether it discloses ownership and management.
NewsGuard awards weighted points for each criterion and sums them up; a score of less than 60 earns a “red” rating, while 60 or more earns a “green” rating, which indicates it is generally reliable. NewsGuard also identifies which sites are satire — for example, the popular publication The Onion — and distinguishes platforms, such as YouTube and Wikipedia.
By installing the extension on its public-access computers, the library is giving patrons more context for the news they encounter online and helping them build critical news literacy skills.
“From middle school students to senior citizens, nobody is immune to online misinformation,” said Sarah Brandt, NewsGuard’s Vice President of News Literacy. “Public libraries play the unique role of connecting every member of their community to quality information, and NewsGuard appreciates the opportunity to help libraries with that task.”
With support from Microsoft Corp., which is sponsoring NewsGuard’s news literacy initiative, NewsGuard makes its browser extension available free to public libraries. More than 300 libraries nationwide have already installed NewsGuard’s extension onto patron computers, though Swisher is the first in Iowa.
“Rather than censoring news sites and telling patrons what they can or cannot read, librarians can use NewsGuard to provide patrons with context about their sources,” said NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz. “By reading NewsGuard’s Nutrition Label reviews of websites, which include detailed explanations of how a site fared on NewsGuard’s nine criteria, patrons will gain a better understanding of how to assess the credibility of information they encounter online.”
“Giving readers information about sources of information is what librarians have been doing since the invention of libraries,” added NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill. “That’s why these NewsGuard-library partnerships make so much sense and why they are now happening so quickly.”
Librarians and educators interested in bringing NewsGuard to their library or school can visit newsguardtech.com or contact Sarah Brandt at sarah.brandt@newsguardtech.com.
About the Swisher Community Library:
The Swisher Community Library is located in Johnson County and serves the communities of Swisher, Shueyville and surrounding rural areas.
About NewsGuard Technologies Launched in March 2018 by media entrepreneur Steven Brill and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz, NewsGuard provides reliability ratings and detailed “Nutrition Labels” for thousands of news and information websites. NewsGuard’s ratings and Nutrition Labels can be licensed by internet service providers, browsers, news aggregators, and social media and search platforms in order to make NewsGuard’s information about news websites available to their users.
NewsGuard’s trained journalists rate news websites based on nine basic, apolitical criteria of journalistic practice. These ratings are made available to consumers through its browser extension, which is available on Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox browsers, and on mobile devices through the Edge mobile browser for iOS and Android devices.
How it works: Before publishing a rating and Nutrition Label for a website, NewsGuard analysts reach out to people responsible for the website to ask about any issues related to the nine criteria. As a result, more than 500 websites have made improvements to their online practices either during this pre-publication comment period or soon after publication of the rating. NewsGuard has rated nearly 3,000 websites in the U.S., providing Nutrition Labels for the websites that account for 96% of online engagement in the country.
For more information, including to download the browser extension and review the ratings process, visit newsguardtech.com.
Contacts
Swisher Community Library:
Laura Hoover, Librarian
72 2nd Street, Swisher, IA
319-857-4090
swishlib@southslope.net
NewsGuard:
Steven Brill, Co-CEO, steven.brill@newsguardtech.com, +1 212-332-6301
Gordon Crovitz, Co-CEO, gordon.crovitz@newsguardtech.com, +1 212-332-6407
Sarah Brandt, Vice President of News Literacy Program, sarah.brandt@newsguardtech.com, +1 212-332-6316