January 12, 2021Google announced the open fund in mid-January. Google’s news and information credibility lead, Alexios Mantzarlis, said they received more than 300 applications from 74 countries in the three-week application window.
The scope of the winning projects is pretty remarkable. The audiences targeted include a range from Catholics to Pekeño 77 fans, the elderly to 18- to 26-year-olds, people with disabilities in Spain to wet market workers in Indonesia.
Mantzarlis served as director for Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network and managing director of the Italian fact-checking organization Pagella Politica before arriving at Google. He says many of these projects mark the first time as far as he or Google knows that fact checking will be done in these formats.