How to separate fact from fiction

Google wants to help users find fact checked news but is this a public good?

Google says it will fact-check news reports. Dado Ruvic / Reuters

The United States presidential election has been historic for many reasons. Never before have two profoundly unpopular candidates run for the highest American political office. Both candidates have regularly challenged the boundaries of truth and facts. As a result, media organisations have rushed to provide “fact checks” for the claims that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have made on the campaign trail. Now Google is getting into the fact-checking business.

Unlike media outlets that ostensibly operate in the public interest (despite most being for-profit business ventures), Google and social media companies such as Facebook are advertising companies that have found themselves with mighty news-spreading power.

Last week, Google announced that it would add a “fact check” tag to stories on its news aggregator that it determines follow “commonly accepted criteria for fact checks”. Google wants to separate highly opinionated and widely circulated content from stories that abide by accepted standards of fact checking. The move was partly spurred on by Mr Trump’s outlandish claims that Google was “suppressing” harmful information about Mrs Clinton.

Google Search uses algorithms to justify the placement of stories in its results. But there are still decisions that Google makes that can be debated from an ethical perspective. This week, a group of Palestinians protested that Google (and Apple) don’t list several villages in the West Bank on their mapping platforms. By omitting the villages, the Palestinians said, Google had adopted an Israeli perspective on the conflict.

This debate highlights the complexity of Google and other internet companies getting into the news business. Given that these companies have power over how people obtain information, they should be subject to ethical standards normally associated with the media. It is admirable that Google wants to help fact-check information, but the company is wading into the sometimes complex politics of the media.