The Trust Project

The Trust Project is an international consortium of news organizations collaborating to use transparency to build a more trustworthy and trusted press. Search engines and social media platforms, which have become important news distributors, are participating as well. Founded by award-winning journalist Sally Lehrman, we are a nonpartisan non-profit. We apply a user-centered design process. Based on dozens of in-depth interviews with a diverse spectrum of public voices, news executives involved in the Trust Project identified and designed a system of 8 Trust Indicators®, or disclosures about the news outlet, producer, and commitments behind a story, to make it easy for the public to choose integrity-based news. Digital platforms such as Google, Meta and Bing use the Trust Indicators to surface quality news to their users. The materials produced by our collaboration are available to all reputable news companies that apply to participate and agree to abide by the group’s commitments and Trust Protocol.