From major elections across the globe to conflicts and crises, the year 2024 was critical for the news industry, said Google News on Wednesday.These significant events highlighted the important role of newsrooms in providing accurate and timely information, said the company, highlighting its contributions to fight misinformation in the Indian news ecosystem.
In 2024, the tech giant supported the Shakti initiative — a collaboration to combat misinformation and provided AI training to newsrooms.
It also empowered India’s news ecosystem through initiatives like the Indian Languages Programme, boosting user engagement and ad revenue for local publishers, as well as expanded Google News Showcase.
“We’re proud of the significant impact of our scaled and in-depth work with Indian news publishers, spanning efforts to understand new user behaviors and revenue streams, programmes that have driven modernisation and substantial revenue increases, and collaborative initiatives like Shakti, which has established a robust framework for combating misinformation,” said Durga Raghunath, Head of India News Partnerships.
Raghunath noted that the Shakti initiative brought together over 50 news publishers and 300 journalists to debunk misinformation and deepfakes in 10 local languages, reaching a vast audience.
She added that the programme “enabled newsrooms to publish fact-checks 78 per cent faster and facilitated the creation of over 67 new fact-checking desks”.