World’s largest networking site, Facebook Inc., along with Mozilla, City University of New York, and several other industry leaders have launched a $14 million fund to support news integrity, said a post on the CUNY website.

"The initiative will address the problems of misinformation, disinformation and the opportunities the internet provides to inform the public conversation in new ways,” said Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of news partnership in official blog.

“A group of tech industry leaders, academic institutions, non-profits and other organizations are jointly launching a $14 million fund to support the News Integrity Initiative , a global consortium focused on helping people make informed judgments about the news they read and share online. The Initiative’s mission is to advance news literacy, to increase trust in journalism around the world, and to better inform the public conversation. The Initiative will fund applied research and projects, and convene meetings with industry experts,” said the CUNY post.

Others who backed the initiative include the Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund, the Ford Foundation, the Democracy Fund, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Tow Foundation, AppNexus, and Betaworks.

The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism has been tasked with administering the project.

Facebook’s participation in the initiative comes as a little surprise as it has largely refused to identify itself as a media company. The company also rebuked claims that fake news on its site affected the outcome of last year’s U.S. presidential election. It also faced criticism for censoring conservative viewpoints in its trending topics section. Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg even wrote a post denying the charges; however, it followed changes in the way trending topics were selected.

Read: Stop Fake News, Hate Speech, Germany Tells Facebook, Twitter

Right now, 19 organizations and individuals have signed up to work on this new project, including:

  • Arizona State University in the U.S.
  • Center for Community and Ethnic Media at CUNY Journalism School in the U.S.
  • Constructive Institute at Aarhus University in Denmark
  • Edelman based in the U.S.
  • European Journalism Centre in the Netherlands
  • Fundación Gabriel García Márquez para el Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI) based in Colombia
  • Hamburg Media School in Germany
  • Hans-Bredow-Institut in Germany
  • The Ida B. Wells Society in the U.S.
  • International Center for Journalists based in the U.S.
  • News Literacy Project based in the U.S.
  • Polis, London School of Economics in the U.K.
  • Ecole de Journalisme de Sciences Po (Sciences Po Journalism School) in France
  • The Society of Publishers in Asia based in Hong Kong
  • Trust Project based in the U.S.
  • Walkley Foundation in Australia
  • Weber Shandwick based in the U.S.
  • Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales
  • United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Division for Freedom of Expression and Media Development headquartered in France
RELATED STORIES
Facebook Fake news Mark zuckerberg