According to the Trust Project website, a venture initiated by Craig Newmark, a left-wing megadonor to Democrats, in collaboration with prominent technology giants, has launched a project to provide readers with guidelines to determine the reliability of news stories.
The Trust Project’s website outlines eight “trust indicators” designed to assist readers in discerning trustworthy news stories.
Funding for the project comes from influential tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, along with Newmark, a notable benefactor of journalism schools and left-wing media organizations like Mother Jones and ProPublica.
Among the trust indicators, the seventh one, labeled “Diverse Voices,” encourages readers to seek out perspectives less commonly heard in society, considering factors such as generation, class, ideology, race, gender, sexual orientation, or geographical location.
The website recommends that readers evaluate whether journalists demonstrate attention to diversity and whether communities are portrayed stereotypically or neglected.
According to the website, the project is a collaborative endeavor funded by Microsoft, involving the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA), the Trust Project, the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, and the University of Washington’s Accelerating Social Transformation leadership program.
Among the project’s supporters is the Democracy Fund, established by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay.
The Capital Research Center reports that Omidyar’s organizations contributed $1.2 billion to left-wing groups between the years 2004 and 2022, with most of the funds directed towards left-wing organizations since 2014.
In addition, Politico reveals that Omidyar and his spouse contributed $45 million in 2020 to a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Civic Action Fund.
This funding was utilized to finance attack advertisements against former President Trump and certain Republican senators during the 2020 election.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund, identified as a left-leaning dark-money group, allocated $410 million to Democrat initiatives in 2020.
In 2021, Republican Ohio Representative Jim Jordan raised concerns about Microsoft’s alleged censorship activities, explicitly targeting conservative voices on platforms such as LinkedIn.
According to Russell Dye, a spokesperson for the House Judiciary Republicans, who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation in June 2021, Microsoft has been accused of leveraging its influence to advance a “woke” agenda and support Democrats.
The Daily Caller News Foundation contacted the Omidyar Network, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Microsoft, Meta, Google, and the Trust Project, for any contribution they might like to make concerning the new project.
There was no immediate response from any of these entities.
