Creating the equivalent of “Nutrition Facts” for news will come by developing an independent rating organization funded collectively by social media companies. A news rating agency might rely on fact checking organizations in part but should focus on rating all news outlets using a model similar to the most successful product rating effort to date: Consumer Reports.
The information equivalent of Consumer Reports would evaluate each news-producing outlet’s content across all mediums (print, audio and video) over a sustained period to ascertain the distribution of true, contested and false information they create; distinguishing disinformation and misinformation from verifiable reporting.
The agency would review the outlet’s editorial process, retracted statements, their financing, ownership structure, amongst other criteria and openly provide those scores to the public. The organization would then provide an information rating score which social media companies and search engines post next to a producer’s web link or streaming headline. The score could be accompanied by a color-coded circle designating the distribution of news reporting to opinion pieces hosted by the outlet.
The information reporting score provides several advantages over information removal or regulation and should satisfy all competing perspectives regarding false reporting.
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