Facebook subscriptions, fake news war and fact-checking (with context)
Our personal weekly selection about journalism and innovation. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.
Jul 21, 2017 · 4 min read
edited by Marco Nurra
- Facebook says it’s launching subscriptions in Instant Articles this autumn. If a publisher chooses to implement support for a paywall, readers will get 10 articles for free — in much the same way they do with the New York Times’ “metered” access plan. After that, they will be prompted to sign up for a subscription. If they already have one, Facebook says it will make it easy for them to log on.
- But Facebook’s support for subscriptions could be a double-edged sword. As Mathew Ingram writes, “the bottom line with this subscription offering is the same as it has been with Instant Articles and Facebook video and half a dozen other things the social networking behemoth has come up with: They are fundamentally designed to benefit Facebook, and to centralise control in its hands, and to generate as much content as possible. Any benefits they provide to media companies are ancillary at best. If you connect your subscription plan to Facebook, will you get increased reach? Probably. Will it help you drive some new sign-ups? Perhaps. But it’s important to remember that the entity in control of every aspect of that relationship is Facebook, not you — Facebook decides who sees what and when, what it looks like, how it functions, and how much revenue you will get.”
- Google introduces “the feed”, a personalized stream of news on iOS and Android. The feed, which includes items drawn from your search history and topics you choose to follow, is designed to turn Google’s app into a destination for browsing as well as search. Google is hoping you’ll begin opening its app the way you do Facebook or Twitter, checking it reflexively throughout the day for quick hits of news and information.
- People who get news from social or search usually don’t remember the news org that published it, survey finds. Just 37 percent of users who came from search, and 47 percent of those who found a story via social media, could correctly name the news organization that published it (2 days later). By comparison, 81 percent of users who directly arrived on a story could later recall where it was published, according to a study published on Wednesday by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.

- People have trouble A) detecting faked images and B) identifying where they’ve been changed, according to new research published Tuesday in the Journal of Cognitive Research by researchers Sophie J. Nightingale, Kimberley A. Wade, and Derrick G. Watson from the University of Warwick. In its own write-up of the study, the Washington Post made a fun quiz based on the images used in Nightingale’s experiment, which, if you’re curious about your own abilities, you can take here.
- How can fact-checkers earn readers’ trust — and keep it? Rather than revolving around individual claims or political figures, fact-checking should be about the big issues within a community, which would put journalists’ work in a larger frame. “People dismiss fact-checking because they see it as claim by claim, not understanding the context framing each problem,” Tom Rosenstiel said. Fact-checkers should start by identifying four or five key ideas that readers need to understand — the economy, for example — and ask questions that would lead to a holistic grasp of those topics. According to Rosenstiel, this approach goes deeper, wider and puts the journalists in a proactive role that can involve their audience.
- Facebook releases an update on its project to combat fake news and support journalists. The steps Facebook has taken to dissuade the publication of false or inaccurate news include limiting spam or fake news publishers’ access to buying ads, reducing posts that link to “low-quality web page experiences,” introducing ranking updates to limit the spread of false news or clickbait and testing new ways for people to report a false story.
- With an election looming in September, fake news is big news in Germany. So concerned is the German government by a growing quantity of false and defamatory information online that it is going further than others in pressuring tech companies to better police their networks. Parliament approved a new law this month under which lawmakers could soon impose fines of up to €50 million on social media firms if they fail to remove criminal content like defamatory and hate-inciting posts quickly enough.
International Journalism Festival is the biggest annual media event in Europe. It’s an open invitation to interact with the best of world journalism. All sessions are free entry for all attendees, all venues are situated in the stunning setting of the historic town centre of Perugia.


