Building Trust through Transparency

In another community topic, Craig from Calkins was discussing adding a "Fact Box" on articles to show transparency about how the article was written.

I would actually love to talk to you guys about this more. What can TownNews.com do, as your CMS, to help you establish greater trust with your readers?

We've actually been in discussions with Google on ways to employ Fact Check schema in our articles, using ClaimReview and Fact Check data. I think this would be like a Related Content item, but would have some little fields along with it, such as the claim that was made, the "rating" of the claim (true/false on a scale), and the source that was used to verify/debunk the claim. These would be separate Content items, so you could multiples per article, and could even drag them inline next to the claim being made.

As part of that, I'm also looking at ways for news orgs to be more transparent in reporting...

Some ideas that were being discussed:

• Headline labels to differentiate opinion, satire, commentary, etc. (To avoid confusion that this item may not be news)
• Publication information - date posted, edits, updates, maybe revisions
• Location of reporter
• Sources / citations / references
• Questions from users in response to the article
• Conflicts of interest and other declarations
• Updates (Related Content item)
• Corrections (Related Content item)

And then I like Craig's additions of:

• researched by ___
• edited by ___
• interviews conducted

Also maybe:

• fact checked by ___

Maybe there would be a way to differentiate stories that had this information versus other stories? Like, there would be an icon next to the headline... ?

Also, should this be fielded data to help each newsroom remember to write each thing? It could even be like a wizard for the reporter to fill out... Or should it be just a free-form box where you type stuff in?

What do you guys think? Would you use this? Is there even time for this in resource-strapped newsrooms?