Project description
Real-time fact checking busts fake news
With more than one in two people questioning the validity of news reports, media credibility has come under fire. The need for fact-checking has surged but the process is costly and time-consuming. Newtral is a pioneer in the field, striving to produce and distribute data-driven journalism. With more than 40 people on its staff, Newtral is the biggest professional fact-checking team in the European Union. It is aiming to become the gold standard in this challenging field, applying artificial intelligence also in semi-automatic fact-checking work. The NEWTRAL innovation will help boost Newtral's market expansion, increasing growth to about EUR 32 million and an anticipated staff expansion of more than 100 experts by 2024.
Objective
People consume news because they need to be informed about the state-of-the-world and events around them, but 54% of citizens think that there is a serious problem regarding fake news and trust in media has decreased to the lowest-point-ever. It is very difficult for citizens to assess the credibility and veracity of news. On the other hand, citizens’ trust is crucial for news media that look for solutions to fight fake news and increase citizens’ trust. The solution is fact-checking, but fact-checking is a very time-consuming and costly task.
Newtral is a startup funded in October 2017 with fact-checking as its core business becoming one of the fact-checking pioneers and the leaders in the EU. +40 people currently work in Newtral researching new ways of producing and distributing data-driven journalism in the digital era, being the biggest professional fact-checking team in the EU. Our team is behind the production of ‘El Objetivo’, the first TV-show (+1M weekly live viewers) in the EU to bring fact-checking to a TV format in prime time.
Newtral is also a leading member of the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), a community of international fact-checkers (51 members) and the only member with a TV show in prime time. ‘El Objetivo’ has been awarded with the “Best Audiovisual journalist fact-checking projects award” by the IFCN.
Our ambition is to create a new market by turning professional fact-checking into a scalable and profitable business. Newtral intends to become the gold standard in the fact-checking sector by applying NLP, advance data science methods and AI to the journalism fact-checking work to semi-automate the verification allowing any fact-checking journalist to become a ‘fact-checking centaur’.
SME Instrument Phase-1 and Phase-2 will be extremely beneficial in helping the company to accelerate development and market expansion of the solution, boosting the company’s growth to +100 employees and 32M€ revenues by 2024.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
28049 Madrid
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.