News Broadcasting
The Trusted News Initiative forms Asia-Pac network
Mumbai: The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) partners have agreed to expand their global representation by establishing a regional Asia-Pacific network.
TNI’s new Asia-Pacific network of media organisations has received training funded by the Google News Initiative to help their journalists navigate the disinformation environment.
The TNI is an industry collaboration led by the BBC of major news and global tech organisations working together to stop the spread of disinformation where it poses a real-world risk. The Asia-Pacific network will allow the TNI’s regional partners to share their insights on combating disinformation and discuss regional trends. Through the TNI cooperative framework, they will draw on their expertise to share best practices and findings with the larger TNI and alert each other to the most dangerous forms of disinformation.
The TNI is expanding its Asia-Pacific presence with the addition of various groups of independent news organisations, including ABC (Australia), Dawn (Pakistan), Indian Express (India), Kompas (Indonesia), NDTV (India), NHK (Japan), and SBS (Australia).
BBC News International Services senior controller & BBC World Service director Liliane Landor said, “With the creation of TNI’s first regional network, we are bringing together trusted Asia-Pacific news-publishing organisations to further reinforce our collaboration and to make it even more efficient and productive.”
Google News Lab head Matt Cooke said, “As part of the Google News Initiative’s ongoing efforts to strengthen journalism and fight misinformation, we’ve worked with a range of academics, news organisations and nonprofits across the globe for several years. Now, we’re supporting the Trusted News Initiative to deliver targeted, expert training workshops on a variety of digital tools to help journalists as they seek to continue day-to-day verification and fact-checking in newsrooms across the region.”
AP, AFP, BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Financial Times, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, Information Futures Lab, Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Microsoft, The Nation Media Group, Reuters, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter, and The Washington Post are current TNI partners.
The TNI partnership works collectively in four main areas:
Fast alert: creating a system so organisations can alert each other rapidly when they discover disinformation that threatens human life or disrupts democracy.
Intelligence sharing: a real-time conversation of equals between news organisations and tech platforms about the evolving nature of harmful disinformation.
Media education: sharing insights and research on how audiences and users react to disinformation, thus informing best practice and supporting better digital literacy.
Engineering solutions: sharing information on engineering solutions for authentication of trusted news sources and improving the information environment.
This is entirely separate from, and does not in any way affect, the editorial stance of any partner organisation.
News Broadcasting
Senior media executive Madhu Soman exits Zee Media
Former Reuters and Bloomberg leader says he leaves with “no regrets” after brief stint at WION and Zee Business
NOIDA: Madhu Soman, a veteran of global newsrooms and media sales floors, has stepped away from Zee Media Corporation after a short stint steering business strategy for WION and Zee Business.
In a reflective LinkedIn note marking his departure, Soman said his time within the network’s corridors was always likely to be brief. “Some chapters close faster than expected,” he wrote, signalling the end of a nearly two-year spell in which he oversaw both editorial partnerships and commercial strategy.
Soman joined Zee Media in 2022 after more than a decade abroad with Reuters and Bloomberg, returning to India to take on the role of chief business officer for WION and Zee Business. His mandate was ambitious: bridge the newsroom and the revenue desk while expanding digital and broadcast reach.
During the stint, Zee Business reached break-even for the first time since its launch in 2005, while WION refreshed programming and strengthened its digital footprint across platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.
But Soman suggested the cultural fit proved uneasy. Describing himself as a “cultural misfit”, he hinted at deeper tensions between editorial instincts shaped in global newsrooms and the realities of India’s television news ecosystem.
Before joining Zee, Soman spent more than seven years at Bloomberg in Hong Kong as head of broadcast sales for Asia-Pacific, expanding the company’s news syndication business across several markets. Earlier, he held senior editorial roles at Reuters, overseeing online strategy in India and managing Reuters Video Services from London.
His career began in television and wire reporting, including a stint with ANI during the 1999 Kargil conflict, before moving into digital publishing as India’s internet media landscape took shape.
Now, after nearly three decades in broadcast and digital media, Soman is leaving Delhi NCR and returning to his hometown, Trivandrum.
Exhausted, he admits. But unbowed. And with one quiet line that sums up the journey: he didn’t sell his soul — because some things, after all, are not for sale.
