News, Disinformation, and Free Expression
On this week’s episode of The Open Mind, we welcome Google News Vice President Richard Gingras. Gingras is a distinguished public digital and new media executive newsgeist organizer who recently announced a $25 million dollar investment to expand support for the news eco-systems long-term success in online video, specifically to improve the news experience on YouTube, including features to give viewers more context on issues that have been subject to misinformation. Gingras oversees pages that connect more than a billion unique readers each week, articles from journalists in 72 countries, 45 languages.
Together, we discuss the state of free expression on the internet, and the role of Google in providing access to information that changes the way we understand global and local issues. Gingras claims that since we live in an entirely different world, where every person has essentially been handed a printing press, we must evolve the ways that we interact with information. In our evolving ecosystem of news, Google looks to adapt services such as Google Search, Google News, and YouTube, to provide new resources for understanding issues of our day. Gingras sites that providing statistics for communities beyond weather, into data surrounding crime, air quality, or housing costs can inform communities of the pressing issues that need to be addressed at polls.