• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, March 17, 2022

But here’s the thing. It must be easy to understand. The Verify web platform from TV station group Tegna is a good start, and it needs to go further.

Verify offers explanations of things, about two minutes long -- such as whether you need to pay taxes on cryptocurrency, or confirming that President Biden never told Americans they would receive a new round of stimulus payments, or whether the gas you are putting into your car comes from Russia.

Other fact-checking websites offer detailed results focused on specific, in-depth stories. But the average TV news consumer or digital media consumer may be short on time when it comes to figuring out what’s what. Going to multiple sources of news information can be a chore.

And there is the factor of demographics. Older consumers still go to linear TV for their news, while younger people are more apt to use digital media.

Mind you, this would not be an easy task -- even for producers and reporters to check. And, even then, some explanations can seem complex.

For example, “MSNBC Reports” on Tuesday had a segment that discussed the recent incident on a live news broadcast of Russian-owned TV network Channel 1. In the middle of an on-air video of a news presenter/anchor, a woman appeared behind the anchor with a handmade sign with a message that included the words “No War.”

Reports from U.S.-based news organizations said the woman was a staffer at the network, and she was arrested after the incident. Her name was not disclosed.

After the incident, a Twitter account under the name “Marina Ovsyannikova” popped up, according to MSNBC, purporting to show through tweets her unhappiness about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As it turns out, the account is fake. The account was only recently created, says Savannah Sellers, anchor/correspondent for NBC News.

“These are all red flags, showing something that looked like it could have been fake [the video of the protester on-air] was real, and then a fake event comes after that,” she says.

Another report on a video of Ukrainian schoolchildren walking into their new school in Naples, Italy was real. NBC was able to confirm this video from posts of parents, as well as finding that the school, on Google Maps, actually exists.

Now, imagine a special half-hour news show of this type being aired every day -- covering these news reports in terms of fact-checking and other references.

While some news content might need heavy analysis that would take a long time to explain, much of it can be done in short video segments, like what Verify is doing.

But will people really watch this? Perhaps -- dare I say -- there can be an “entertaining” way to deliver this type of news story.