erinpetenko

I have been a working journalist for about three years now. If it helps, let me explain a little bit about how we use video and verify it in our stories.

There are a few main sources of video that ends up in our work: Videos we shot, videos we get from institutions, and videos that we get from readers who say, post it on social media or send it to us. With videos we personally took, the journalist was there to witness the video taking place and can confirm the accuracy of the video. With videos that we get from institutions such as the government (from public records requests) or other news organizations, we generally rely on the institution's reputation to ensure that the video is real but we often have to verify that the video is showing the full picture, so to speak. So if we receive a dashcam video of a controversial traffic stop, we'll also talk to witnesses and review documents to see if anything happened off-screen that would change the context of the video.

With videos from strange sources, we are obviously aware of the potential risks. If it's a story with the potential for controversy -- opposing viewpoints, exposing corruption, something like that -- we would never solely rely on the video as evidence but talk to as many people as possible and look for records. I've never heard of someone trying to fool a reporter here with a deepfake, but we do get people sending us misleading or confusing videos as evidence.

I think SourcedFact is an interesting experiment, but the fact that it doesn't include any way to verify what journalists personally witnessed or people we spoke to firsthand limits its usefulness. Particularly with local news where so much of your work is showing up to the accident or calling up the school board member.

I'm more excited to see if the New York Times can solve fake news issues with its News Provenance Project. I'm normally dubious of blockchain claims but this does seem like one specific topic where a blockchain could be useful.

I understand that, and I appreciate it for what it offers. I often try to link to primary-source materials in my story so people can view the direct evidence if they choose, but a smoother way to do that like you're proposing could make it easier for people to quickly verify information. And the crowd-sourced fact-checking system is an interesting way to go about that.

I just wanted to caution readers here that for local news organizations in particular, enough of our information comes from interviews and on-the-ground reporting that it won't solve our problems with reader trust. At a local level, there's a lot less of a paper trail on what the government does, even on a day-to-day basis.