Craigslist founder Craig Newmark thinks fake news is a problem—and it’s time for the industry to get on top of it.
To tackle the issue, Newmark is donating $15 million to two separate efforts to promote ethics in journalism.
Newmark will give $10 million to Columbia University’s journalism program, to establish the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security. The center will provide instruction in digital and physical security, algorithmic bias, image manipulation, and source protection in a high-surveillance era, according to Columbia’s announcement.
He will also donate $5 million to the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based journalism think tank. The donation, the institute’s largest single donation ever, will be used to create a new center for ethics and leadership. The center will expand teaching, research, and coverage of media ethics. The donation will also enable creation of an annual fellowship for a journalist to “conduct research, write about and teach ethics, and share expertise with organizations nationally,” according to Poynter.
Newmark already has established himself as a leading figure in this area, donating millions to a variety of journalism efforts, including $20 million to the graduate school for journalism at the City University of New York, and $20 million to fund The Markup, a non-profit investigative news startup.