The Italian news agency ANSA declared it developed a blockchain system for tracing news in association with Ernst & Young Advisory. Named ANSAcheck, the solution will enable readers to examine the origin of the news that is issued on the ANSA platforms, its affiliated publications, and third parties like social media and other platforms.

ANSA is a news wire service whose members and shareholders are twenty four publishers of Italian newspapers. The company has various offices in Italy and across the globe and is amongst the top 10 news agencies across the world.

When a news article is filed, a hash or digital fingerprint of the verified text will be registered by the blockchain. Once the article is issued on the website or some other platform, the text will be re-hashed and matched with the existing hash of the article. If the information matches, the published article will receive an ANSAcheck digital sticker. 

ANSAcheck is based on the EY OpsChain Traceability solution, working on Ethereum’s public blockchain. The news provenance solution will enable readers to see the history of the news and its original source. It will also allow ANSA to keep a record of the use of its news, and bring together web agencies, news publishers, and other players in the journalism ecosystem.

“In recent days, we witnessed the frequent fraudulent use of our brand to give truth to false news,” stated Stefano de Alessandri, CEO of ANSA. “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.”

The provenance of news is a prominent concern due to the efficiency of communication in the modern world. Edited images, Fake news, and other media are often disseminated over the internet. Nevertheless, agencies such as ANSA require to check the source to evade the spread of fake news. During the ongoing COVID-19, pandemic trusted news is required to stop confusion among people.

Subsequently, the New York Times (NYT) is operating its blockchain-based News Provenance Project to tackle misinformation in the media. French telecoms firm Orange is operating with safe.press to verify press releases arising from the company.

Meantime, China’s Baidu is working the PIC-CHAIN blockchain for image copyright protection, and Sony has a rights management blockchain for printed works. While both these systems correlate to intellectual property, they can trace the usage and provenance of the images and text to assure appropriate credit.