The New York Times Company said it is working on a project that seeks to fight fake news using IBM’s blockchain platform
New York Times Is Out For News Images
The project dubbed ‘The News Provenance Project’, was spearheaded by The New York Times’ research and development team. The project will first target photojournalism, with the publication focusing on the ease with which images can be manipulated and then widely distributed “with few brakes applied from social platforms, messaging apps or search engines.“
The project hopes to examine the consumer response to having access to greater information pertaining to news images and to learn more about the potential applications for blockchain technology within the journalism industry.
The New York Times picked interest in distributed ledger technology due to the fact that it allows records to be traceable. By publishing news images on a distributed ledger, the company hopes that audiences will be able to easily determine the course of a picture and whether or not it has been edited after its initial publication.
The publication stated its belief that “attributes of blockchain technology show promise in developing a workable solution.”
The first phase of the project is slated for late 2019.