In recent months, an earthquake of scandal has shocked journalists into recognition of our failures and vulnerabilities. We are no different than many of the institutions we cover. Malpractice by a tiny percentage of doctors, lawyers, priests, and accountants casts the shadow of suspicion upon each member of the tribe.
At this moment, it is the journalist's turn to stand in the corner of shame. The recent sins of The New York Times have threatened to turn the name Jayson Blair into a verb meaning "to fabricate, plagiarize, and falsify." Already, disgruntled readers and sources across the country are accusing journalists of having Jayson Blaired stories they may not like.
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JOURNALISM WITHOUT SCANDAL |
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One antidote to such poison, according to a group of editors gathered at the "Journalism Without Scandal" conference, is a virtue called "transparency." In other words, newspapers would be better off if readers had a clearer understanding of how journalists think and work.
But a number of descriptions of a transparent press had a one-way mirror feel to them: We editors will explain to you readers what we think you should know about us. They called to mind the words of the great slapstick sage Soupy Sales: "People in glass houses shouldn't invite Sophia Loren over for the weekend."
What would true transparency look like? Imagine getting an open letter like the one below from the top editors of your newspaper, a vision of the future that the conference editors soundly rejected.
The decline of newspaper readership over the last 30 years can be traced to many complex factors, including social and technological changes over which journalists have little influence and control.
That leaves many things that editors can do. They can improve their level of public service and customer service. Without sacrificing their independence, they can open up their news organizations for inspection. They could pay more attention to how readers think the news report could be better.
Such measures might make a pipe dream start to look real and get us closer to a transparent, accessible, accountable press.
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To the Readers of the Clark Unintelligencer
Fellow Citizens:
As the editors of your local newspaper, we feel an urgent need to do everything in our power to keep, and in many cases regain, your trust. That trust, so essential to democratic life in this community, has eroded in recent years.
You can trust us. We promise.
It will take new thinking and leadership to keep that promise, but we embrace that burden and will need your help to carry it out.
In many fields of endeavor, scandal is followed by reform. This is as it should be. In news organizations across the country, large and small, journalists are responding to recent news scandals by tightening up our standards and practices.
Our natural inclination is to create measures that will avoid future scandals. While such steps are necessary, they are insufficient to the larger purposes of news leadership. You will not be served well by a newspaper whose first goal is to avoid mistakes. We promise you a more enterprising, vigilant, and comprehensive news report. You deserve it.
But how will you hold us accountable for these promises? How will you know whether we are doing our jobs, whether we are serving you the way good citizens need to be served?
We will do this by making ourselves more transparent, accessible, and accountable to you than ever before.
This requires us to open up our ways of working for your inspection and critique. As editors we will explain, as clearly and as often as possible, the reasons behind our news judgment, especially when our decisions seem troubling or controversial.
We'll make mistakes. We'll discover some of them, and you will inform us of many more. We promise to make it easier for you to do that. We promise to correct our factual errors. But that is not enough. When we get the context wrong, we'll be ready to explain and clarify.
We hope we never make big mistakes, but when we do we promise that we'll correct them in a big way. We'll look at the failed systems that create error and misperception. We'll work hard to fix them and let you know what the reformed systems look like. And we will say something you don't often hear from journalists: We'll say we're sorry.
Transparency is not just about avoiding scandal. We want to create powerful journalism that engages you and illuminates the world in which you live. That means we have to be not just competent, but excellent in our craft. We will reveal to you more often not just what we know, but how we know what we know.
While we honor the great traditions of editorial independence, good leaders need strong doses of humility, not an easy virtue for many of us. We cannot fulfill these promises without you. The First Amendment is not just our amendment, it's yours, too. And with our mutual freedoms come profound responsibilities.
You need to help us correct our factual errors and our contextual mistakes. You need to point out to us those occasions when you think our biases show through, when we have failed in our efforts to be fair and neutral. And if we seem antagonistic to your world, if you cannot see yourselves over time in our coverage, if you feel alienated or excluded, we need to hear from you. We pledge to make it better.
We know you can't fulfill your responsibilities as citizens unless we make things easier. We have failed to create adequate channels for you to express your opinions, suggestions, or complaints. We will encourage efforts throughout the company, not just in the news departments, to make ourselves more accessible to you. If you call us, whether to complain about a wet paper or to alert us of something important missing from our coverage, we'll try to put you in touch with a living, breathing human being, if that's what you think you need.
Leadership requires us to write down our ethical principles, our news and business values, our standards and practices. We promise to revisit these regularly and, with your advice, to revise them when necessary. More than that, we will publish them, every day on our website and at least once a year in the newspaper. Please read them, and hold us accountable.
We'll do our part. We promise. But we need you to do yours.
Sincerely, The Editors |
