Google announces USD 1 mn grant to promote news literacy in India

Google said a curriculum will be developed by a team of global and local experts, who will roll out the project in seven Indian languages

Technology giant Google on Wednesday announced a USD 1 million grant to promote news literacy among Indians.

The money will be given to Internews, a global non-profit, which will select a team of 250 journalists, fact checkers, academics and NGO workers for the project, a statement said.

The announcement, part of a USD 10 million commitment worldwide to media literacy, comes at a time when news publishers, especially on the digital front, have been found to have indulged in spreading misinformation.

"The local leaders will then roll out the training to new internet users in non-metro cities in India, enabling them to better navigate the internet and assess the information they find," the statement said.

With an eye to curb misinformation, Google News Initiative (GNI) India Training Network -- a group of 240 senior Indian reporters and journalism educators -- has been working to counteract disinformation in their newsrooms and beyond since last year.

GNI has given verification training for more than 15,000 journalists and students from more than 875 news organisations in 10 Indian languages, using a "train-the-trainer" approach over the past year, it said.