Where's Philanthropy's Fight Against Fake News Headed Next? https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/4/3/hewlett-disinformation-grants-fake-news

1. 4/9/2018 Where's Philanthropy's Fight Against Fake News Headed Next? — Inside Philanthropy
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/4/3/hewlett-disinformation-grants-fake-news 1/12
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Where's Philanthropy's
Fight Against Fake News
Headed Next?
Mike Scutari
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2. 4/9/2018 Where's Philanthropy's Fight Against Fake News Headed Next? — Inside Philanthropy
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/4/3/hewlett-disinformation-grants-fake-news 2/12
According to the Foundation Center, since 2016,
grantmakers have poured hundreds of millions of
dollars into newsrooms, think tanks and universities
that support media research and practice.
Some of this money has flowed as part of
philanthropy's new fight against fake news, which
began in earnest in the immediate aftermath of the
2016 presidential election.
We've been tracking this stream of funding since it
began, just weeks after the last votes were counted.
And we've wondered how long it would last. Would
this be a case of foundations and wealthy individuals
throwing some quick money at a problem before
moving on to the next hot issue? Or was it the start of
a deeper, longer-term push by philanthropy to
improve how information flows and media works?
It's still too early to say, but the Hewlett Foundation's
major give on this issue, announced last week,
suggests that philanthropy's fight against fake news
still has plenty of momentum. The move comes amid
a firestorm around Facebook's privacy practices and
ongoing revelations about Russia's interference in the
2016 election. In some ways, the heat here is growing
as fake news concerns dovetail with broader fears
about social networks and the power of Big Tech.
Following a yearlong exploration, Hewlett will
allocate $10 million over the next two years toward
grappling with the growing problem that digital
disinformation poses for U.S. democracy. Focusing
primarily on the role of social media, the new funding
commitment will support high-quality research to
improve decisions made by technology leaders as well
as government and civil society advocates.
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3. 4/9/2018 Where's Philanthropy's Fight Against Fake News Headed Next? — Inside Philanthropy
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/4/3/hewlett-disinformation-grants-fake-news 3/12
Research will seek to increase the understanding of
digital information, surface potential solutions, and
examine practical and philosophical considerations in
addressing digital disinformation. To the latter point,
research may explore "incentives for voluntary
regulation and the role of government including
agencies such as the FEC, FTC, FCC and others."
While the R word, regulation, is dreaded in Silicon
Valley, I think it's safe to say that social media
companies could use help wrestling with some of the
larger issues, here. (Mark Zuckerberg, you may recall,
admitted that when he was coding into the night at
Harvard, he didn't expect that less than 10 years later,
he'd be worrying about how his platform would be
used to manipulate domestic and foreign elections.)
The foundation plans to support a small number of
grantees with larger grants to advance the field of
researchers, advocates and decision-makers working
in this area. The effort is one part of Hewlett's
Madison Initiative, founded in 2013 to strengthen the
values, norms, and institutions of U.S. democracy in a
polarized era.
In an interview published earlier this year in Inside
Philanthropy, Hewlett Foundation president Larry
Kramer foreshadowed the foundation's pivot to
combating digital disinformation. "Democracy is
more than just voting," he said. It is governing in a
way that cherishes a "free press, an independent
judiciary, and other critical political and civil
institutions.... Observing what’s happening today, I
fear we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of
American democracy. I know that sounds dramatic,
but it just might be true. So that’s what keeps me up
at night."
Powered by

4. 4/9/2018 Where's Philanthropy's Fight Against Fake News Headed Next? — Inside Philanthropy
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/4/3/hewlett-disinformation-grants-fake-news 4/12
Fortunately, when you preside over a foundation with
$9 billion in assets, you can act on your insomnia by
cutting some hefty checks.
An Evolving Division of Labor
As the funder-led crusade against fake news has
expanded in terms of the number of participants and
strategies, we're beginning to see a division of labor
among funders come into focus. Hewlett Program
Officer Kelly Born alluded to this development while
commenting on its new initiative.
"Digital disinformation is a problem that
philanthropy is still getting its arms around, and
tackling in different ways," she said. "Some
philanthropies are intervening 'upstream' to improve
journalism and create high-quality content, while
others are working 'downstream' on citizen-facing
efforts like fact-checking and news literacy.
"Our funding will focus 'midstream,' where widely
trusted gatekeepers have been replaced by a wild west
of voices active on social media platforms."
Born's analysis is spot-on, and it provides a good
opportunity to see where other funders' efforts fall
across this continuum.
For example, the News Integrity Initiative, a
consortium funded by Facebook, the Craig Newmark
Philanthropic Fund, Ford Foundation, Democracy
Fund, the Knight Foundation, and others, recently
released a roadmap spelling out its strategy to help
people "make informed judgments about the news
they read and share online."
By "building enduring trust and mutual respect
between newsrooms and the public through sustained

5. 4/9/2018 Where's Philanthropy's Fight Against Fake News Headed Next? — Inside Philanthropy
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/4/3/hewlett-disinformation-grants-fake-news 5/12
listening, collaboration, and transparency," the NII
embraces upstream strategies.
Similarly, the new Community Listening and
Engagement Fund, backed by the NII, the Democracy
Fund, the Knight Foundation, and the Lenfest
Institute, will work with newsrooms to produce more
relevant, differentiated, and engaging content.
And Craig Newmark, upon giving a $1 million grant to
ProPublica earmarked for investigative reporting,
said, "as citizens, we can only make informed
decisions when we have news we can
trust. Independent investigative reporting is essential
to shoot down false claims and expose bad actors."
The logic here is simple. Upstream proponents seek to
reign in the proliferation of fake news by producing
accurate, high-quality news that engages the
community. The cream will rise to the top.
Funders are dabbling in more downstream waters, as
well. Last year, Newmark made a $1 million grant to
the Poynter Institute to support a five-year program
that focuses on "verification, fact-checking and
accountability in journalism."
Meanwhile, a closer look at the 20 winning projects
behind Knight's Prototype fund reveals a blended
approach. Some winning projects embrace upstream
themes like "citizen journalism/news engagement,"
while others, by promoting "media/news/information
literary" and "fact checking," were more downstream
in nature.
(In related news, journalists and media entrepreneurs
Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz recently launched
NewsGuard, which, while not a philanthropic entity,
also aims to address fake news by hiring trained

6. 4/9/2018 Where's Philanthropy's Fight Against Fake News Headed Next? — Inside Philanthropy
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/4/3/hewlett-disinformation-grants-fake-news 6/12
journalists to review news and information websites
and provide corresponding "reliability ratings."
Knight is among the investors in this effort.)
Add it all up, and funders seem to have the upstream
and downstream intervention points covered. Hewlett
understands this and clearly wasn't interested in
reinventing the wheel. What's more, its midstream
posture may go a long way to addressing process gaps
across this larger continuum.
Consider funders' upstream efforts. Initiatives to
build trust and collaboration between the public and
newsrooms in the news gathering process is certainly
important, but most fake news doesn't come from
established newsrooms. It originates, to quote Born,
from "conspiracy theorists, foreign adversaries and
others who can now use bots, micro-targeting and
other techniques to amplify polarizing, distorted
content."
"You’ve had disinformation and propaganda since the
dawn of man. But now, we have no gatekeepers," Born
said. "Anyone can produce content and disseminate
it."
And while viewers need to be educated about what
may or may not be fake, "downstream" activities like
promoting news literacy assumes the reader has
already come into contact with fake news. The genie,
as they say, is already out of the bottle. Viewers must
make an intelligent decision regarding the veracity of
the content and refrain from sharing it any further.
By investigating and educating the social media
gatekeepers that disseminate the news, Hewlett's
"midstream" approach imagines a future in which
many viewers may never see a piece fake news on

7. 4/9/2018 Where's Philanthropy's Fight Against Fake News Headed Next? — Inside Philanthropy
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/4/3/hewlett-disinformation-grants-fake-news 7/12
social media in the first place because it was properly
vetted.
Saving Social Media
As noted, Hewlett's midstream strategy emerged after
a yearlong exploration that engaged leading data
scientists, political scientists, technology company
representatives, civil society advocates, and other
funders including through multiple convenings and
an in-depth, independent review of the academic
literature.
The foundation, according to Born, concluded that
"changing the practices of hundreds of newsrooms
and millions of citizens is much harder than looking
at the practices of half a dozen or so social-media
platforms." As it happens, Facebook's headquarters—
located at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park, California—is
a mere seven miles from the Hewlett Foundation's
offices.
Meanwhile, the larger conversation about social
media keeps evolving.
In a recent piece in the New York Times titled "Can
Social Media Be Saved?" Kevin Roose wrote, "I don't
need to tell you that something is wrong with social
media. Maybe it's the way you feel while scrolling
through your Twitter feed—anxious, twitchy, a little
world weary."
In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the
bloom is clearly off the social media rose. But Roose
remains cautiously optimistic. "The original dream of
social media—producing healthy discussion,
unlocking new forms of creativity, connecting people
to others with similar interests—shouldn't be

8. 4/9/2018 Where's Philanthropy's Fight Against Fake News Headed Next? — Inside Philanthropy
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/4/3/hewlett-disinformation-grants-fake-news 8/12
The Last Mile: A Wealthy CoupleIs Impact Investing the Next Big
discarded because of the failures of the current
market leaders."
Hewlett, I suspect, wholeheartedly agrees with this
assessment.
Social media—and, unfortunately, the proliferators of
fake news—are here to stay. By focusing on the
besieged and unwitting promoters of fake news,
Hewlett's new initiative aims to hold social media
"market leaders" accountable, prodding and
empowering them to do the right thing.
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9. 4/9/2018 Where's Philanthropy's Fight Against Fake News Headed Next? — Inside Philanthropy
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/4/3/hewlett-disinformation-grants-fake-news 9/12
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10. 4/9/2018 Where's Philanthropy's Fight Against Fake News Headed Next? — Inside Philanthropy
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/4/3/hewlett-disinformation-grants-fake-news 10/12
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11. 4/9/2018 Where's Philanthropy's Fight Against Fake News Headed Next? — Inside Philanthropy
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/4/3/hewlett-disinformation-grants-fake-news 11/12
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12. 4/9/2018 Where's Philanthropy's Fight Against Fake News Headed Next? — Inside Philanthropy
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/4/3/hewlett-disinformation-grants-fake-news 12/12
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