Building trust through transparency
By Lynn Walsh
Assistant Director at Trusting News
News consumers trust journalism they find to be balanced, in-depth, honest and reputable. These qualities appear over and over in an analysis of 81 in-depth interviews between working journalists and members of their communities.
But how do newsrooms show our readers and viewers that we are balanced, honest and reputable? One way is to build transparency into our process as journalists, including showing how diverse voices and perspectives are sourced in our stories.
As journalists, we think our audiences are aware of all the fact-checking, research, phone calls and work that goes into identifying sources and producing a news story. But they often aren’t. Research shows that people often assume media outlets publish what we hear without fact-checking. They may assume we cover a story because a business or the organization that owns the paper told us to. Or that the people we’re interviewing have been paid to say what they are saying.
To change this, we need to be more transparent about how we do our work, and we need to involve our community in our reporting process by asking for feedback. Generally, newsrooms are not as diverse as the communities we serve. We need to invite our readers and viewers in, so we have their perspectives, experiences, and voices at the table.
A recent study found adding a box explaining your story process can improve a user's perceptions of a news organization. Some newsrooms have used the box to highlight information about why they chose to cover a particular story or to provide insight into their information gathering and fact-checking process. Others have used the box to show how they approached finding sources or asked for audience feedback if they have left important voices out.
Example approaches:
1. Invite Input from readers
Online news site WITF highlighted their push for including multiple perspectives in stories by adding the following to the top of some web stories: “WITF strives to provide nuanced perspectives from the most authoritative sources. We are on the lookout for biases or assumptions in our own work, and we invite you to point out any we may have missed. Contact us on our Trusting News page.”
Source: WITF
2.explain inclusion efforts
The Jefferson City News Tribune used a pull-out box to highlight the different perspectives included in a series of stories about a local trail. They explained what the current article was going to highlight and then linked to stories that provided a different perspective. They also linked to opinion pieces about the topic. This is one approach to show the effort that has been made to include diverse voices and perspectives.
Source: Jefferson City News Tribune
3. Add a reminder about related stories
Community Impact created story pages. Balanced reporting can happen over time, but readers don’t always see the full breadth of your coverage. By adding an editor’s note linking to a page where multiple stories on a given issue live in one place, you can highlight the wide variety of sources you've interviewed. You can remind users you are striving for diverse perspectives and opinions and welcome theirs.
Source: Community Impact
4. Ask Readers for Help
Engaging with your audience and asking for feedback is going to help your reporting be the best it can be. To help get more ideas on who they should talk to in their community, the Iowa Gazette decided to ask their users for help. In a web story they asked for ideas identifying possible sources and general feedback on the story. TheIowa Gazette asked their users for feedback in a simple, yet effective way, by posing two questions at the end of stories on its website: “Have a question about this story? Do you see something we missed? Send an email to…”
If we ask for feedback, we often don’t focus on what we may have missed. By doing so, you are letting users see you want to know how the story could have been better and are willing to make stories the best they can be. Feedback also can help journalists welcome new voices and highlight all communities inside our readership.
Source: Iowa Gazette
Trusting News, staffed by Joy Mayer and Lynn Walsh, is designed to demystify the issue of trust in journalism. They research how people decide what news is credible, then turn that knowledge into actionable strategies for journalists. Get one-on-one, personalized help from the Trusting News team for FREE.