Purpose
I recently challenged myself to describe the purpose of journalism in ten words or less. Here’s what I came up with —
To find and tell the truth in every news story
That was the first description that came to mind, so I wondered why. Often, our first response to a challenge or question is what we really believe. Truth be told, my first reaction was that journalism is about finding and telling the truth in every news story.
The next challenge was how to share that with you in a way that makes sense. During this and upcoming newsletters, I’ll share about —
The Purpose of Journalism
The People of Journalism
The Process of Journalism
I’m writing to two groups, journalists and news consumers (e.g. readers, listeners, viewers), and hope what I share will address the interests and concerns of both groups of people.
Truth
Truth should always be a driving force in journalism — our purpose for doing journalism. Journalists should find the truth and tell the truth. News consumers want the truth and will depend on news sources they trust. Unfortunately, as we reported in the last newsletter, the public’s trust in the news media in the United States is at an all-time low. Since that's apparently the truth about how the public views the news media at this point in our country’s history, we’ll have to start there.
How do we improve the relationship between news media and news consumers? Some might say it’s too late or that we can’t, but I’m not ready to throw in the towel on something so important. One of the news directors I worked for decades ago told me not to bring him a problem unless I also brought him a solution. He didn’t want to hear about my problems. He wanted to hear about my solutions. He might agree or disagree with what I thought was a good solution, but he wanted me to think critically about how to make things better.
So, what’s my suggested solution to the public’s lack of trust in the news media? If you’re a journalist, find and tell the truth in every news story you cover. If you’re a news consumer, find journalists who find and tell the truth in every news story they cover. While that may sound like a great solution to the problem, how do we accomplish it? I think it will take commitment and time.
Truth and Politics
Something interesting begins to emerge as we look deeper into why public trust in the media has fallen through the years. Much of it seems to be connected to politics.
Democrats trust the news media more than Republicans or Independents.
According to a Gallup report released last October —
68% of Democrats surveyed said they trusted the media a great deal or fair amount
11% of Republicans surveyed said they trusted the media a great deal or fair amount
31% of independents surveyed said they trusted the media a great deal or fair amount
Why such a big difference between how Democrats view the media and how Republicans and Independents view the media?
The answer is complicated, but measurable. Gallup began surveying public trust in the media in 1972. The “Great deal/Fair amount” trust level was 68% that first year and rose to 72% four years later. Trust levels began to fall after that until the number reached 53% in 1997. The trust fall continued until it reached the low point of 36% in October 2021.
As for the political divide, let’s look at where trust in the media stood in 1997. Remember that the overall trust had fallen to 53% by that year. Here’s how trust broke down by political affiliation according to Gallup —
Democrats - 64%
Republicans - 41%
Independents - 53%
We’ll use 1997, 25 years ago, as a starting point to understand what’s happened since and why.
Democrats’ trust in the media went down during President Clinton’s last term in office, then went up during President Bush’s first term and part of his second term. Democrats’ trust in the media went down during the last half of Bush’s second term and continued down throughout President Obama’s two terms. Democrats’ trust in the media jumped from 51% at the end of Obama’s second term to 76% mid-way into President Trump’s term in office. It fell to 69% during the second half of Trump’s term, but jumped to 73% in the last year of Trump’s presidency. Democrats’ media trust stood at 68% toward the end of President Biden’s first year in office.
Republicans’ trust in the media rose to 52% in 1998 as President Clinton faced impeachment. Trust fell to 47% by the end of Clinton’s second term in office and to 39% at the beginning of President Bush’s first term. Republican trust fell to 31% by the end of Bush’s first term and continued there until the end of Bush’s second term. Trust rose to 38% during the first half of President Obama’s first term, but fell to 26% by the end of his first term. The Republican trust continued to fall to 14% by the end of Obama’s second term in office. It rose to 18% during the first two years of President Trump’s term, then fell to 10% by the end of his term. Republican trust in the media near the end of President Biden’s first year in office is at 11%.
Independents’ trust in the media started at 53% in 1997 and continued at that level until the second half of President Bush’s first term in office when it fell to 44%. It continued to fall slowly during the Bush years, but rose slightly during the early part of President Obama’s second term in office. Independents’ trust in the media fell again and reached a low point of 32% by the end of Obama’s presidency. Trust rose to about 41% during the first two years of President Trump’s term in office, but fell to 36% by the end of 2020. Independents’ trust in the media fell to 31% during President Biden’s first year in office.
(You can look at the detailed Gallup chart here.)
Keep in mind that the gap between Democrat and Republican trust in the media was a 23% difference in 1997. That gap now stands at 57%. That’s a change of 34% in just 25 years!
The reason the Gallup Survey is important to read carefully is because you can see how the rise and fall of media trust is often connected to the political party in power and how the media covered political news during that time. Even Independent trust of the media fell by 22% in the last 25 years.
Journalists and Politics
I was told in college during the mid-1960s that journalists should be politically independent. My first news director had a policy for all of his journalists that we were not allowed to campaign for candidates, wear campaign buttons, and place campaign signs in our yards and bumper stickers on our cars. He also recommended that we register as Independents for voting. Why? So no one could ever accuse us of preferring one political party over another. His motivation was that the news audience would see us as unbiased in matters of political coverage.
I followed the advice of my professors and the guidance of my news director and have been an Independent since I reported my first news story in 1967. I’ve never campaigned for a candidate, worn a campaign button, or placed a campaign sign on my lawn or bumper sticker on my car. Even though I retired in 2009, I still follow those guidelines. Long-held ethical beliefs become a way of life for a journalist that don’t end even when a professional career does.
That doesn’t mean I haven’t had personal views about political issues the last 55 years. I do admit to being human. Since I’m an Independent, I don’t vote in primary elections. I do vote in general elections, but how I vote is confidential — even to this day. It’s part of being able to report on any story fairly and for the audience to know they can trust what I report.
The reason I bring this up is because I know that some journalists today don’t share my perspective about journalists not openly expressing their political views. Even some national news organizations have changed their ethics policies in recent years to allow journalists to be involved in political protests and demonstrations. Here’s one example —
NPR rolled out a substantial update to its ethics policy earlier this month, expressly stating that journalists may participate in activities that advocate for "the freedom and dignity of human beings" on both social media and in real life.
The new policy eliminates the blanket prohibition from participating in "marches, rallies and public events," as well as vague language that directed NPR journalists to avoid personally advocating for "controversial" or "polarizing" issues. New NPR Ethics Policy, July, 2021
I was not surprised by NPR and other news organizations changing their ethics policies about journalists’ political involvement. It was already obvious to many news consumers that reporters and writers in those organizations had openly supported a variety of political and social issues for a long time.
I began hearing journalists talk about their political and social views in the newsroom as far back as the 1990s and even had to warn one journalist who marched in a public protest. I heard journalists cheer in a newsroom when a particular candidate won a national election. They had openly chosen sides in an election, and that is never good for journalism. Taking sides can color the way a journalist reports about candidates and election issues. It can also affect the way journalists interview candidates about their positions.
National coverage of political campaigns often brings out journalists’ personal political views in the way they report on a story. Some national news anchors have also become more open about their personal views. I wince when I hear a reporter or anchor end a report with their personal opinion about a news story during a newscast. I have the same reaction with writers in print media. That kind of blatant bias would not have been tolerated by news managers in the past and is one of the reasons, I believe, that news consumers have lost trust in the media.
Last month (December 2021), the Columbia Journalism Tow Center shared perspectives on newsroom social media policies. Here’s what news consumers thought about journalists and their political leanings —
We investigated some of these expectations further in our research this year on trust in news, which also showed broad agreement (80 percent of respondents) that journalists should “separate fact from opinion when reporting the news.” A majority of people in the US who often used social media for news agreed that journalists should even go so far as to disclose their political leanings (56 percent), although a smaller share of the public overall felt the same (45 percent).
Levels of cynicism about journalism in the US are not only high—they are exceptionally polarized along partisan lines. This year, when we asked Americans whether news outlets in general were willing to admit (or cover up) their mistakes, whether they understood their audiences, or whether they genuinely wanted to hear from the public, a majority held negative views on all three measures. Even more striking, responses to these questions were highly polarized by partisanship, with two-thirds or more of Republican-leaning respondents holding journalists in low esteem.
Today’s consumers of news are pretty savvy, and many will notice when a journalist says or writes things in a way that expresses their personal political opinion. That may explain some of why the public trust in media has fallen so much in the last 25 years.
What Should Journalists Do?
I believe it’s the job of news managers to remind their journalists to be politically independent. Of course, that has to begin with the manager. News managers should be politically independent and have a strong personal code of ethics that they model to their journalists. You can tell a lot about what news managers believe from what you see, hear and read in their team’s coverage of political and social issues.
If you manage a news department, do you have a written/stated political ethics policy? If not, you can look at some of the policies from other news organizations to see how they handle the issue. Here are some to consider —
The SPJ Ethics Committee gets a significant number of questions about whether journalists should engage in political activity. The simplest answer is “No.” Don’t do it. Don’t get involved. Don’t contribute money, don’t work in a campaign, don’t lobby, and especially, don’t run for office yourself ... For political reporters, yard signs, bumper stickers and even campaign buttons should be considered off-limits. For a broader range of journalists — whether they’re covering politics or not — political activism should be avoided. Society of Professional Journalists
Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything — including photographs or video — that could objectively be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism. Washington Post
In social media posts, our journalists must not express partisan opinions, promote political views, endorse candidates, make offensive comments or do anything else that undercuts The Times’s journalistic reputation.
• Our journalists should be especially mindful of appearing to take sides on issues that The Times is seeking to cover objectively.
• These guidelines apply to everyone in every department of the newsroom, including those not involved in coverage of government and politics. New York Times
Avoid posting information to social networking sites or blogs that could call into question your ability to act independently as a journalist. This includes expressing political views, sports fandom or opinions about newsmakers or sharing internal communications, even if you are participating in what is supposed to be a private group. Recognize that even hashtags can imply support and take care to avoid those instances.
It’s important that no matter what information you post or how private you attempt to make it you refrain from expressing any political or ideological points of view that could compromise your independence as a journalist. Understand that you are responsible for everything you post, whether it is public, private or in a direct message. Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University
If you are a journalist, follow the ethics’ policy of your news department. If your news department doesn’t have a political ethics’ policy, develop your own from a good source and stick with it no matter what others around you do or don’t do.
What Should News Consumers Do?
If you are a consumer of news, look for journalists who don’t express personal political perspectives or opinions in news stories. That includes their personal social media as well (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc). Look for journalists who appear unbiased and politically neutral in the way they report stories. Look for journalists who are aggressive about getting to the truth of a story no matter which political party is involved. That includes reporters, writers, anchors, producers, and editors. You may find that challenging in today’s politically-charged news cycle, but it’s worth it to find unbiased reporting you can trust.
I also advise news consumers to be careful not to depend on journalists who seem to agree with the consumer’s political perspective. You may agree with what you hear, but that doesn't mean what you heard was the truth. Remember that “truth” is the highest objective for both journalists and news consumers. You may find it helpful to consume a variety of news coverage from different sources in order to get the truth about some stories.
Getting only one side of a story is not a good way to build a solid foundation for getting to the truth. A house needs a solid foundation, plus four walls, and a roof to stand strong during tough times. The same is true in building an understanding of what’s true in the news that impacts our life and the lives of our family and friends.
We are living through very tough times in the United States, as well as other countries, and need truth to keep us free.
Next Newsletter
We’ll take a closer look at the people of journalism in the next newsletter, including four attributes necessary for being a journalist who news consumers can trust.
Comments Welcome
I hope these thoughts are helpful to you as a journalist or news consumer. Please share your comments and I’ll respond as quickly as I can. If you like what we’re doing in this newsletter, please let your friends know about it so they can subscribe.
Newsletter Purpose
The purpose of this newsletter is to help journalists understand how to do real journalism and the public know how they can find news they can trust on a daily basis. It’s a simple purpose, but complicated to accomplish. We’ll do our best to make it as clear as we can in future newsletters.