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Big-city newsrooms are fascinating places to work. Movies like Spotlight and All the President’s Men do an admirable job of capturing the essence of their energy. Still, until you’ve been inside one, it’s tough to accurately convey the esprit de corps during significant events like an election, natural disaster or a healthy debate over an editorial decision.
And there lies part of the problem: Readers and audiences don’t find newsrooms or newsgathering outlets very transparent.
Sure, you may see photographers on the sideline of a sports event or producers scurrying around in the background of a television newsroom live shot, but that is just a backdrop — a scene. Readers don’t understand the how or why behind the journalism and judgments journalists make. Everything from which stories are placed on page one to why opinion pages recommend specific candidates is mysterious. This hasn’t changed much since the 1970s, and with today’s hardened and polarized views on almost everything, the how and why feel even more elusive.
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Making matters worse, readers sometimes don’t feel they have a fair and efficient mechanism for surfacing their complaints. It’s very much a one-way communication.
This may be why trust in the media and public institutions is at historic lows. A recent Gallup poll found that 32 percent of the U.S. population reports having “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of confidence that the media reports the news in a complete, fair and accurate way. Simultaneously, 39 percent of people report they “don’t trust the media at all.”
This reality is deeply troubling to our staff at The Dallas Morning News because we realize that when people don’t trust public institutions and the media (which is intended to hold public institutions accountable), something must change. So, what do you do when trust is missing in a relationship? You address it.
I asked our team at The News to proactively investigate ways to meet this challenge. Through this research we found that when trust was higher between journalists and the public, it was because media companies boldly addressed it.
Most notable was the 1970s, when our team at The News — like other media outlets — hired an ombudsman or public editor. At that time, news organizations used them as independent arbiters who provided an extra layer of transparency between the media and the public. The more we researched this role, the more we became convinced we wanted to engage an independent public editor to help act as a bridge between the public and our newsroom.
Our new public editor’s name is Stephen Buckley. Stephen has been in and around journalism for 35 years. As a reporter, he wrote about sports and business and covered local, national and world news. He has also worked as a copy editor, city editor, international editor, managing editor and digital publisher. He is the former dean of the Poynter Institute, a world-renowned school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla.
He teaches journalism at Duke University, where he is a professor of the practice of journalism and public policy in the Sanford School of Public Policy. His credentials are impeccable, and we are one of the few major daily newspapers in the country with this staff position.
Stephen will field questions, research them, and not only answer them directly but also publish columns in our paper and on our website, sharing what he finds.
There will be times when Stephen defends the journalists and times when Stephen defends you, the reader. I know Stephen will not always agree with our judgment calls, which is OK. We are not perfect, and we don’t get it right 100 percent of the time. It’s my hope that Stephen will help you better understand the role of the media, which will ultimately help you learn you can trust us as your primary source of news.
Call it mutual accountability. In the same way that news organizations rightly believe their role is to hold the powerful accountable, we recognize that we need to be held accountable, too. It’s a two-way street.
We want to be different at The News and want you to trust us. However, we know trust is earned, not given. That is why it’s important to me that we take this step for you and others who want a trustworthy news source in North Texas to help you make better decisions and live better lives.
Stephen’s first column will appear next Sunday, May 12. If you have questions about our reporting and you want him to look into it, please email him at [email protected]. His role will be as successful as your questions allow it to be, so I thank you in advance for helping us continue to build trust with you.