Online news

China announces tighter regulations for online news

Companies that publish, share or edit news will need a government licence, and senior editors must be approved by the authorities.

Other staff will be required to undergo government training and assessment, and receive official accreditation.

The legislation will bring online news providers into line with traditional news media operating in the country.

New Facebook tool tags fake news

Facebook has now started testing a fake news killer tool that they announced earlier in December, the Guardian reports. The tool shows a warning message when a user tries to share a spurious link.

A glimpse of Facebook’s fact-checking tool shows a Newport Buzz story “The Irish Slave Trade – The Slaves That Time Forgot” marked as ‘disputed by Snopes.com and Associated Press’. It alerts the user about the authenticity of the news content.

Google News launches fact check label

Fact check will appear with other news organisations in Google News and will, Google says, "shine a light on its efforts to divide fact from fiction".

Richard Gingras, Google's head of news, added it will "help readers find fact checking in large news stories".

He said sites which already have a fact checking service can apply to be included to appear in search results.