Giving Compass' Take:

• Stanford Social Innovation Review reports on a former engineer turned online media maven, who launched the non-partisan fact-checking website AltNews aims to curb the spread of misinformation on social media.

• Could U.S. news outlets learn something from AltNews' methodologies? How can we build greater trust between journalists and consumers around the world?

• Here's how philanthropy can make an impact on strong journalism.

Pratik Sinha was working as a software engineer in the city of Ahmadabad when he cofounded AltNews in 2017 with the anonymous administrator of “Unofficial: Subramanian Swamy,” a parody Facebook page of the Indian politician. They had each spent several years attempting to debunk fake news on social media. While together they had more than one million Twitter followers, they found themselves stuck in an ideological bubble, unable to reach the people that such misinformation seemed to affect most. They launched AltNews with the hope that an independent online platform would have a wider reach.

AltNews’ six full-time staff members fact-check stories on a broad range of topics, including politics, science, education, and religion. All content is licensed under Creative Commons and is free to reproduce with attribution. As a new entrant to India’s crowded media landscape, AltNews still has to prove its credibility, but its articles are increasingly being referenced or republished in mainstream publications, Sinha says.

The website describes its methodology in painstaking detail in an effort to substantiate its claim as a fair, transparent, and nonpartisan fact-checker. Sinha hopes these guidelines empower other people, including professional journalists, to do their own fact-checking. Sinha recognizes that AltNews will need to work with local law enforcement, civil society, and technology companies in order to have real impact. In July 2018, the team met with the police commissioner of Ahmadabad to propose a pilot program for collaboration between fact-checking websites and local government and law enforcement to curb the spread of misinformation. AltNews is also working with Google to design a fact-checking curriculum for journalists.

Read the full article about combating fake news in India by Priya Shanker at Stanford Social Innovation Review.