YouTube will start highlighting whether a channel owned by a news publisher is funded partly or wholly by a government or is a public broadcast service through its information panels in a bid to provide better transparency and context for news content to users in India.

"Our goal is to equip users with additional information to help them better understand the sources of news content that they choose to watch on YouTube. This information panel will be displayed on the watch page of all the videos on its channel" said Tim Katz, Director, Head of News Partnerships, YouTube.

YouTube had recently expanded information panels to bring fact checks from eligible publishers to news-related videos on its platform. These panels, available in English and Hindi, aims to provide context on newsworthy topics that are prone to misinformation.

The Google-owned video sharing service is engaging with a number of third-party publishers like BOOM, Quint, Factly, AFP, Jagran and others to verify the facts in news videos, and flag incorrect information to help users distinguish between misinformation and authentic news stories.

In an official blogpost, Katz said they are investing in new product features to prominently surface authoritative sources across the platform. The company's top news shelf prominently highlights videos from authoritative news sources in search results while its Breaking News shelf features videos about a specific event from prominent news organizations directly on the YouTube homepage.

"We are also investing in expanded support from YouTube specialists to support news partners grow their presence on YouTube, from providing training to helping with sophisticated technical integrations" Katz said in the blogpost.

YouTube has also committed $25 million to the news industry, as a part of a broader $300 million investment by the Google News Initiative.

"In December, we announced funding to 87 news projects from 23 countries around the world to build stronger video capabilities and innovate with new video formats. And 10 of these projects came from India," Katz said.