Italy's leading news agency ANSA has developed, in collaboration with EY Advisory S.p.A (EY), a unique news tracking system based on blockchain technology in a first for Italy's publishing industry.
As of today, through a news tracking label called ANSAcheck, readers can check the origin of news that appears on ANSA platforms or is distributed to other editorial publications or third parties such as social media networks or other platforms.
ANSA is the leading Italian news agency and one of the top ranked worldwide and it represents 24 publishers of major Italian newspapers.
ANSA's objective is to strengthen bonds of trust between its organization and its readers and customers, using blockchain technology that shows the source of news. Thanks to the ANSAcheck news tracking label, readers can trace the history and source of each news item.
In this way, readers can continue to depend on the values that have always distinguished ANSA's reporting.
Under the current health emergency, attention to news and its sources is at the highest level and it is more important than ever to provide readers with a solution that allows them to verify the source of a news story. The blockchain application for the publishing industry will allow organizations to produce and distribute digital content in a reliable and secure way, further increasing the relationship of trust with readers. "In recent days, we witnessed the frequent fraudulent use of our brand to give truth to false news," said Stefano de Alessandri, Chief Executive Officer of ANSA. "We are therefore particularly proud to be the first to launch a highly innovative project, carried out for all our readers and the clients of the Agency. "Starting today, we can track the origin of the news and - at the same time - support the professionalism of our journalists.
This is an important step in the fight against fake news". Through the EY blockchain HUB in the EY Mediterranean Region, EY has developed for ANSA and its associated publishers a solution based on blockchain technology by providing a tool to: - Allow readers to see the history of news and show the primary source; - Allow the comparison of news read with ANSA's source of origin; - Qualify ANSA and its main customers as quality providers in the world of information by increasing public confidence, starting from ANSA's position as market leader: "If it is news, it is ANSA"; - Allow ANSA to keep track of the use of its news; - Interconnect ecosystem actors, publishers, web agencies, and others; - Implement new logics and business models (such as reputation system and as-a-Service replicable solutions).
The new ANSA solution is based on EY OpsChain Traceability technology, characterized by public transactions recorded on the Ethereum blockchain.
In particular, the foundation of the platform is the smart contract, which is an IT object that allows the creation of a cryptographic string of the news and allows verification of the information published on the ANSA.it website. + When the readers display the news on their browser, they can verify the presence or absence of the digital sticker, because the sticker will be assigned by verifying the parameters of the news published on the ANSA website. When these parameters match with the ones recorded in the blockchain during the creation of the news, the published news will receive the ANSAcheck digital sticker that tracks the news' origin. Marco Mazzucchelli, EY Mediterranean Regional Advisory Services Leader comments: "Today we are experiencing a period of great transformation, digital and economic, also dictated by the ongoing health emergency. With ANSAcheck, EY wants to support the digital transition of companies operating in the publishing industry, in a particularly delicate moment in which news takes on an even more decisive role by addressing social behavior and ensuring the authenticity of sources. This innovative solution, based on EY OpsChain Traceability blockchain technology, will allow readers to have broad visibility of the primary sources of more than a thousand news items a day".
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