Recently, there was a story in the media that mischaracterizes NewsBreak, its staff, and its operations based on false assertions. At NewsBreak, accuracy and openness are some of the core values that underpin everything we do, so in the interest of transparency, we’d like to clear up some of the misconceptions about us that appeared in this story.
To begin, the story seems to give the impression that NewsBreak is a publisher of information, like a traditional media outlet. NewsBreak is a platform that hosts content from third-party sources. Our platform hosts more than 100,000 pieces of content every day, primarily local-first information from a wide variety of publishers. Given this large volume of content, we can’t always guarantee that everything that appears on our site is accurate. That’s why we always encourage our readers to verify the accuracy of what they read directly with the content’s source.
Unfortunately, this media story uses instances where false information appeared on our site to suggest that NewsBreak knowingly publishes false information and does little to stop it. This is entirely inaccurate. As soon as NewsBreak is made aware of inaccurate content, we immediately remove it pursuant to our community standards. We are strongly committed to being a go-to source for local information, which is why we strive every day to ensure that what our users read is accurate and informative.
Furthermore, the media report mischaracterizes our use of artificial intelligence. As a technology company, we recognize that AI is the future of technology, which is why we are proud to incorporate it into our platform to help users find the information they want as efficiently as possible. Our AI systems combine data-driven information from social media, municipal websites, and freely accessible content to produce a short summary that readers can easily read at a glance. We have, and will continue, to experiment with methods to harness the power of AI even better in the future. Yet the media report seems to suggest that our AI technology is somehow writing its own stories at the expense of local journalists – an entirely false claim. NewsBreak believes strongly in elevating the important work of local journalists, which is why we always credit original sources.
Also, the story seems to suggest that AI summaries constitute a large portion of the content on our site. In fact, AI-generated summaries constitute less than 1% of the content on NewsBreak. Most of the content in these summaries include council meeting agendas, upcoming events, accident reports, updates on local businesses and restaurants, and other local information.
Finally, the media report alleges that NewsBreak has “Chinese origins.” Make no mistake: we are a U.S. company, and always have been. Like most technology companies, we have R&D staff overseas to develop and maintain our platform, but our entire senior leadership and content moderation teams are based in the U.S.
Additionally, the story claims that NewsBreak was founded in 2015 as a subsidiary of Yidian, a Chinese tech company originally founded by NewsBreak’s CEO Jeff Zheng. The truth is that NewsBreak has always been an entirely separate company from Yidian. Yidian was one of our series A investors in our early years, but they’ve never had any managerial control over our operations, and they have completely divested from our company many years ago.
As NewsBreak continues to grow and mature, we are committed to full transparency with the media and welcome scrutiny. It is unfortunate that an outlet chose to publish untrue claims about our company, and we hope it will make corrections and instead share the truth about us. Regardless, NewsBreak will never shy away from our mission: to make local information more accessible and enhance daily lives of locals, revive local journalism, and empower local businesses.
