Google has launched a new stream of called Youtube Newswire, which will feature verified eye-witness videos to be used as a resource for journalists around the world. The internet giant aims to curate a feed of the most newsworthy eyewitness videos of the day, which have been verified and are embeddable from the original sources.
Youtube Newswire will feature videos uploaded from around the world, and will be verified by Storyful – a social news agency that has been working with Google since the 2011 Tahrir Square protests in Egypt. The Newswire will feature global and regional feeds of the most relevant videos in different parts of the world, although the focus is mainly on eye-witness videos that can be verified to be true.
Alongside this are two other initiatives by Google to assist journalists in discovering first party eyewitness videos. The First Draft Coalition will bring together veteran editors and journalists to provide a guideline for the media on how to verify eyewitness media and discuss the ethics of using it in reporting. The coalition website will launch later this year, and will provide verification and ethics training, tools, research, and, most importantly, case studies.
The WITNESS Media Lab is the other project, which doesn’t focus on Youtube or online video. Instead, the group will produce a series of in-depth projects that focus on human rights struggles as seen from the perspective of those who live, witness, and experience them.
There are a lot of misleading videos on Youtube, and the fact that Google is trying to provide a resource for journalists to discover verified content for reporting is a step in the right direction. If only it could apply the same standards and verification process to all its videos as well.
[Source: Youtube Blog]
