The Messenger Pens AI Partnership to Verify Its Reporting Quality

The general interest news publisher The Messenger, which launched in May with an ambitious vision for its reach and revenue, has penned a multiyear, multimillion-dollar partnership with the artificial intelligence company Seekr, according to president Richard Beckman.

Among other elements of the deal, The Messenger will gain access to a proprietary tool built by Seekr that helps journalists eliminate bias in their reporting by flagging instances of clickbait, subjectivity or personal opinion. 

The Messenger has sought, from its launch, to position itself as a source of unbiased reporting in an otherwise partisan media landscape, and its partnership with Seekr is a further extension of this thesis, according to Beckman. 

“We launched The Messenger with the mission of removing partisanship from the news, and Seekr uses AI to evaluate the transparency of content,” Beckman said. “The alignment was perfect.”

The strategy also has a commercial purpose: By avoiding the appearance of political preference, The Messenger hopes to court advertisers looking to reach consumers from across the ideological spectrum. 

The partnership reflects one of the many ways in which publishers, including The Atlantic, Politico and G/O Media, have begun implementing AI into their editorial and commercial operations. 

While the technology has captured headlines, the use of sophisticated algorithms to evaluate the quality of content is not a new concept, according to Vanessa Otero, the founder and chief executive of Ad Fontes Media.

Advertiser concerns over brand safety, combined with the scale of the open web, have led to the creation of dozens of companies promising to verify, evaluate or otherwise assure brands that their ads have appeared as intended. 

The technology powering these efforts, while continuously improving, routinely makes mistakes, and even the most advanced AI is far from foolproof.

The Messenger courts advertisers with centrism

The proprietary Seekr technology will be available to The Messenger staff in their content management system, though reporters will not be required to use the tool, according to Beckman.

If elements of a story contain indications of bias, such as inadequate sourcing, the filter will flag the issue and provide editors an opportunity to adjust it. 

Stories published using the tool will receive a score reflecting their political lean and reliability that will be visible to readers, according to Seekr chief executive Pat Condo. 

A hub on The Messenger home page, outlaid with Seekr branding, will house a rotating cast of the verified stories. Seekr will also receive placements in other ad units, including newsletters. 

“We have seen brands want to align with relevant content, so the idea of a scoring element became very useful,” Condo said. “It helps media agencies place ads against content that aligns with their brands.”

The Messenger will pay a licensing fee to Seekr, and Seekr will pay The Messenger for advertising inventory, though both parties declined to provide financial specifics. 

In addition to creating software designed to flag bias in journalism, Seekr also aggregates content on its website. As part of the partnership, it will now feature reporting from The Messenger. 

In total, the AI company has struck deals with around six publishers, including the entrepreneurship hub One Valley and the podcasting company Oxford Road, according to Condo. Seekr is also part of the consortium of investors in the process of buying Forbes. 

Navigating brand safety

The Seekr score appended to published stories serves two audiences, according to Beckman: The Messenger audience, who can trust the objectivity of what they are reading, and the advertising community.

The extent to which The Messenger readership will value these scores is unclear; few other publishers go through such efforts to demonstrate to consumers the quality of their reporting. 

For advertisers, however, the ratings create the appearance of unbiased coverage, which could entice brands looking to reach consumers without endorsing the political bent of the publisher. 

Still, the solution does little for the vast swaths of vital reporting that are demonetized because of keyword blocklists and sentiment analyses. According to a February 2021 Adalytics report, thousands of articles on premium publishers’ websites are deemed brand unsafe by verification firms.

Efforts from Seekr and The Messenger to create a neutral environment for advertisers, while helpful, circumvent rather than address this core issue, according to Otero. 

“Any publisher that demonstrates a commitment to highly reliable, minimally biased content and has a third-party verify that is in a more deserving position of brand dollars,” Otero said. “But there are real limitations to its revenue ceiling because of brand safety.”