News Telemundo launches data verification service on WhatsApp

In another effort to combat misinformation and bring quality content in Spanish to Latino communities in the United States, Noticias Telemundo launches its data verification line on WhatsApp.

Through our T Verifica platform, we join WhatsApp's global data verification program, which currently includes more than 50 verification organizations that are certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), the most important network of verifiers. of the world.

If you want to chat with us on WhatsApp to help you understand what is true or false,

by clicking on this link, or save us in your contacts with the phone

.

There you can send us everything from questions, images and audio, to links, social media posts, articles or information you want us to verify, and you will also have access to our most recent fact checks.

Likewise, they can choose to subscribe to our newsletter and receive on their phone the main topics of interest that we publish every week.

It's easy, all through a custom menu.

With this line of WhatsApp we want to create a direct channel of communication with our audience, to help them navigate

to which we are exposed every day.

What is disinformation and how it spreads: José Díaz-Balart explains it

Jan. 19, 202203:10

In recent years, Hispanics have been the target of intense fake news and misinformation campaigns in Spanish, especially around the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination, as well as during the 2020 presidential election. 

A study by the market research firm Nielsen indicates that Hispanics are an especially vulnerable target for misinformation, due to their greater dependence on social networks and private messaging applications to connect with friends and family around the world. 

[We teach you how to identify false information for free]

The fight against disinformation has become especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic, so much so that the Joe Biden Administration considers it an "urgent threat to public health."

"Our priority is to serve the Latino audience in the United States and communicate directly with those who trust our work to get information," says Maria Luisa Tabares, director of digital content for Noticias Telemundo.

"We want to help combat disinformation in Spanish through the two means most used by the Latino community: social networks and private messaging applications," explained Tabares.

Orlando Watson, from the WhatsApp alliances team, was enthusiastic about the union with Noticias Telemundo, which allows taking advantage of the potential of text messaging tools to "connect Spanish-speaking users of WhatsApp in the United States with reliable information" , said.

News Telemundo joins the world's most important fact-checking network

July 19, 202100:52

The new alliance with WhatsApp is an extension of the collaborative work that began during the 2020 presidential campaign, when we launched a bilingual project that brought users information and verification about the US elections.

Since 2020, Noticias Telemundo has been making a sustained effort to combat misinformation among the Hispanic community in the United States.

In September of that year we launched the data verification platform T Verifica, whose mission is to verify the accuracy and veracity of the statements made by politicians, public officials and other prominent figures in public discussion, as well as to test the

circulating on social networks and other digital media.

[Schwarzenegger's video lessons on debating with family and friends]

In March of last year, Noticias Telemundo became the first Spanish-language outlet in the United States certified as a fact-checker by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).

T Verifica has a new WhatsApp line for our readers to write to us.Noticias Telemundo

And in December, together with MediaWise, also from the Poynter Institute, it launched the MediaWise en Español initiative, a digital literacy program to train Spanish-speaking adults – especially those over 50 – on how to detect what is true and what is false on the Internet.

[Using false information, Russia tries to hide its attack on a maternity hospital in Ukraine]

The initiative consists of a complete online course that each person can take at their own pace, as well as lessons over several days on WhatsApp and a series of videos with Noticias Telemundo journalists José Díaz-Balart and Julio Vaqueiro.

Noticias Telemundo also has agreements with Politifact, the prestigious Pulitzer Prize-winning English-language fact-checking platform, to bring its content translated into Spanish to the Hispanic audience in the United States.

If you want to know more about how we do our verification work, click here.