Weekly Digest: Fighting Russian Disinformation

The Guardian has signed a deal with Google to become part of Google News Showcase. According to PressGazette’s estimates, the deal might be worth £5m+ per year, with Google paying a monthly fee for using the newspaper in Google News and Google Discover products.

Launched almost two years ago with a promise to invest $1 billion globally, the platform includes some 1,500 news outlets from various countries, including big publishers like The Telegraph and The Daily Mail.

Google has been aiming to sign up more local publishers as well. As Journalism.co.uk notes, “there are 240 UK titles on Showcase and 93 per cent of the titles are local news publishers.”

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Five years ago, Maltese star investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia became one of the most prominent reporters killed in recent memory. Brothers George Degiorgio and Alfred Degiorgio and their friend Vince Muscat were identified as suspects.

This week, Reuters’ interview with George Degiorgio indicated that he confessed to killing the journalist, something he and his brother previously denied. In the interview, Degiorgio said that the killing was “business as usual” for him and that he would have asked for more money to commit it had he known who Daphne Caruana Galizia was. 

Notably, Degiorgio said “he will soon implicate others in plotting to assassinate her,” according to CNN’s summary. 

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The UK government plans to strengthen laws designed to fight Russia’s disinformation campaigns on the Internet. The law would require social platforms to proactively counter disinformation promoted by foreign states.

In recent years, there’s been a lot of concern around the role of Russian disinformation in elections in the West, as well as in the promotion of Russian propaganda narratives related to the invasion of Ukraine.

As Reuters notes, “the law is likely to be passed during this parliamentary session through an amendment to link the National Security Bill and Online Safety Bill, both of which are in the government's current programme.”

Bonus — Five more stories you might want to check out:

• Institute of Mass Information: Russian occupiers are blocking Viber and YouTube in Kherson region
• Institute of Mass Information: 46 cases for the Russian military's crimes against media opened in Ukraine
• AP News: Prosecutors: 2 more suspects arrested in De Vries slaying
• The Verge: Twitter starts testing new CoTweets feature that lets two accounts co-author a tweet
• The Guardian: Tech platforms face UK ban on blocking news providers before appeal

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