YouTube Newswire will curate and verify eyewitness news footage
Google’s YouTube has partnered with social news agency Storyful to launch a newswire service that provides a curated feed of newsworthy eyewitness videos.
Source: YouTube
Called ‘YouTube Newswire,’ the platform will feature both international and regional feeds that include topical eyewitness videos.
Each video will be verified by Storyful’s editors and will be embeddable from original sources.
There will also be a daily newsletter that users can subscribe to.
Olivia Ma, head of strategy and operations at Google’s News Lab, wrote in a company blog post: “Today, more than 5 million hours of news video is watched on YouTube every day, and the role of the eyewitness has never had a more vital place in the newsgathering process.”
YouTube is also launching two more offerings, ‘The First Draft Coalition’ and ‘The Witness Media Lab.’
‘The First Draft Coalition’ will serve as a resource for journalists who need help verifying eyewitness media and using it in their reporting. It consists of experts from organizations including Eyewitness Media Hub and citizen investigative journalism site Bellingcat.
‘The Witness Media Lab’ will bring together technology, advocates, and journalists to produce projects that focus on human rights issues seen from perspective of those who are suffering. The first one will explore the role that bystander video has played in police brutality cases in the US.