Australian Associated Press LTD

AAP has progressed its charitable objectives to advance social and public welfare, to advance education and promote mutual respect and tolerance in 2024 in a range of ways, especially through new and continuing activities undertaken by AAP FactCheck. This work helps to protect the integrity of Australia s information environment, with a goal of providing a factual foundation for public discourse and promoting social cohesion through greater understanding. AAP FactCheck significantly expanded its reach and impact in FY24, producing a record number of fact check articles (450) debunking false content, including narratives exploiting social anxieties and targeting vulnerable communities. We also debunked health misinformation, political disinformation, and narratives around global conflicts and domestic tensions that stoked fear and division. By providing free access to this content, AAP FactCheck directly contributed to advancing social and public welfare, mitigating the negative impacts of misinformation on vulnerable groups and fostering a more informed and cohesive society. AAP FactCheck also prioritised reaching diverse audiences, expanding our translation of English factchecks into three alternate languages and sharing them free of charge with CALD publishers, ensuring accurate information was accessible to previously underserved audiences. This initiative promoted mutual respect and tolerance by ensuring fair access to information and fostering a more inclusive and informed public discourse. AAP FactCheck also trained nearly 1000 journalists in digital factchecking, equipping them with the skills and knowledge to debunk misinformation and disinformation, encouraging them to support information integrity in Australia. This year, we prioritised the needs of Indigenous, rural and regional newsrooms in this training initiative, which directly supports the objective of advancing education by empowering media professionals to uphold journalistic integrity and disseminate accurate information to the public. We also launched a video service, routinely creating and sharing media literacy and debunking content on social channels to engage a younger audience. AAP FactCheck created and ran a targeted social media campaign during Global Media and Information Literacy Week that reached 2.5 million Australians. This campaign focused on raising awareness of imagebased disinformation created using generative artificial intelligence, a rapidly growing concern. In addition, AAP offered a handful of free newswire subscriptions to outlets in need and gave a new First Nation s publication a 50 percent discount in support of its website launch. AAP also provided heavily discounted images to a fundraising drive for an important community organisation, the Rural Fire Service. This serves AAP s objective to provide access to accurate information about Australian society to enable and encourage widespread understanding and tolerance among all sectors of the c