(Image source from: The Hindu)

Google India on Tuesday stated it will provide training to 8,000 journalists in English and six other Indian languages in the next one year to guard journalists against falling prey to mendacious news stories.

The Google News Initiative India Training Network for this will choose 200 journalists from cities across India who will improve their skills in verification and training during five-day train-the-trainer boot camps that will be organized for English and six other Indian languages.

This network of certified trainers will then train more journalists at two-day, one-day and half-day workshops organized by the Network.

Training workshops will be conducted in English, and other regional languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, and Kannada in cities across India, Google India said in a statement.

Fact-checking, online verification and digital hygiene for journalists, using a curriculum built by experts from First Draft, Storyful, AltNews, BoomLive, Factchecker.in and, DataLeads will be the chief focus of training.

"Supporting trusted, authoritative media sources is a top priority for Google, which is why we are proud to collaborate with Internews, DataLeads, and BoomLive to support journalists in their fight against misinformation in India," said Irene Jay Liu, Google News Lab Lead, Asia-Pacific.

"Our goal is to train more than 200 trainers, who will then train 8,000 journalists in six languages over the next year, making this Google’s largest training network in the world," Liu added.

By Sowmya Sangam