The Trust Project

The Trust Project is a complex international consortium involving approximately 120 news organizations working towards greater transparency and accountability in the global news industry, including The Economist, Folha de São Paulo, The Globe and Mail, the Independent Journal Review, Mic, Italy's La Repubblica, Il Sole 24 Ore, and La Stampa. The Project was started in 2014 by Sally Lehrman, a journalist and former director of Santa Clara University's journalism ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and launched in November 2017. Richard Gingras, head of Google News is a co-founder. The Project is funded by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark’s Philanthropic Fund, Google, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund, the Markkula Foundation and Facebook. Mandate The Trust Project was created to "strengthen public confidence in the news through accountability and transparency". It is a consortium of news companies working collectively to develop and implement transparency standards that for users can see and machines can read in order to increase accountability in journalism. Consortium members The consortium includes 120 members such as The Economist, The Washington Post, Germany's Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA), The Globe and Mail, the Independent Journal Review (IJR), Mic, Italy's La Repubblica, La Stampa, Bay Area News Group, CBC News, Heavy.com, Sky News, The Toronto Star, TEGNA, Voice of OC, Italy's Corriere della Sera and Il Sole 24 Ore, Spain's El Pais, Greece's Kathimerini, and Haymarket Media Group. Members work closely with the Trust Project to display the required Trust Indicators, implement associated markup, and have the right to use the Trust Mark logo.