AFP joins First Draft Coalition and Facebook in fight against misinformation

CrossCheck, launched by the First Draft network and Google News Lab, is a collaborative tool bringing media, technological and academic partners together to stop the spread of disinformation online and to improve the general public’s access to verified information.

Along with more than 10 other newsrooms, AFP will contribute its expertise to support this effort to boost identification and verification of online content.

“As with journalists’ safety, media do not need to compete when it comes to fighting disinformation and manipulation. Between post-truth and conspiracies, the core values of our profession are under attack and we have to fight back together,” explains Michèle Léridon, AFP’s News Director.

Grégoire Lemarchand, assistant to the Editor-in-Chief, who is responsible at AFP for social networks, said: “Verifying facts has always been key to our work at AFP and has an important position in the CrossCheck project, where it approves the work produced by the participating teams.”

The First Draft network, launched in September 2016 and grouping more than 80 partners, brings together the biggest social networks and platforms as well as international agencies, organizations defending human rights and projects for validation of facts and verification.

After the United States and Germany, Facebook, a member of the First Draft coalition, is deploying its fact-checking tool in France. The social network will rely on several methods to check reports concerning fake news. Each user will be able to report dubious content, which will then be checked by the French partner media, including AFP. When published material is characterized as fake news by two partner media, it will be flagged on Facebook.