As India gears up for assembly elections in four states and one Union Territory, Google on Monday announced to train journalists covering the polls with a new online training series. The Google News Initiative (GNI), in partnership with digital media and information initiative DataLEADS, has opened registration for "PollCheck: Covering India's Election" online training series in local languages, with a special boot camp for community radio stations.

The GNI aims to offer training on photo and video verification, YouTube for election coverage, data visualization for elections, and how journalists can keep their online accounts and sources safe.

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"This PollCheck training series is open to journalists, journalism students, media educators, bloggers, and community radio station professionals. Your participation will be confirmed and a Zoom link will be shared via email," the GNI team said in a statement.

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The GNI India training network was launched in July 2018, onboarding 240 trainers via seven pieces of training of trainers in different Indian languages. Since the inception, the network has trained more than 25,000 journalists, media educators, journalism students, and fact-checkers across the country.

India is set to hold assembly elections in the states of Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and UT Puducherry in March, April, and May. (IANS/SP)