Because of the Labor Day Weekend Holiday in the United States, our next blog post will be Tuesday, September 4.
Update #2: New York, Sunday, Sept. 2 at 13:19 .
I was enjoying a quiet breakfast at my hotel in Berlin a few days ago. I always choose the same corner table in the Club Lounge at the top of the Intercontinental Berlin, since I can have my breakfast and engage in work at my MacBookAir until it is time to go to work. The table next to me is usually vacant in that corner, but not this day. An older American couple from New Jersey took their seats. The gentleman kept an eye on me and then said:
“Young man, you are typing too fast and working too hard.”
I smiled and thanked him for taking years off my age. We engaged in conversation. “What do you do?,” the wife asked. I told them.
“Oh, a journalist. That is tough to do these days with all the fake news and all the opinionated reporting. I hope you are teaching your students to stick to the facts.”
Two weeks earlier, at a happy hour in a private residence in Florida, something similar had happened. A woman holding on to her gin and tonic on this hot Friday afternoon decided to let me know that “you have an obligation, as a journalism professor, to educate journalists to be honest, to tell the truth and not show their bias.”
It is a recurring theme these days, especially when the President himself proclaims that the press is the enemy of the people.
That is why I was so happy to see a package of articles that helps us define what we do, how we do it and to remind those critics that not all journalists are dishonest. Tall order, but these pieces offer good background material to prepare before you head out to your next happy hour.
Explaining ourselves
Lifting the veil: We want to be transparent about how The Bee creates its journalism
This is from the editor of the Fresno Bee.
“…..journalists – myself included – don’t do a good enough job of explaining the “how” and “why” of what we do. In informal conversations I have every day, many readers seem baffled by the process of journalism. Others seem to think that every decision we make is politically motivated. It isn’t, but it’s fair to say that we need to do a better job of explaining why it isn’t.
I want to lift the veil. We can be much more transparent and open about what we do, how we do it and why we do it. The processes we use to report the news are developed to engender your trust. But the problem is you don’t really know much about how we go about our work, or why you should trust what we do. That’s on us. We have to do a better job of explaining how news is made.
The first place we’re embedding transparency and engagement into our journalism is a topic of overwhelming importance right now: this fall’s elections. But elections coverage is just a start. We plan to do this throughout our newsroom. We’ll learn from what we do during the campaign, and extend it more broadly.
We’ve already begun:
Our Devin Nunes profile story contains a box that highlights reporter Rory Appleton’s work on the story. How many sources were contacted? Who agreed to be interviewed? Who didn’t? How much archival research was conducted? The answers to these questions provide context into how the story was reported – and makes the process more transparent. This is highly relevant information for you, and we will do this often.
We’re adding biographical information about reporters on stories. You’ll see that on the Nunes piece, and more broadly in the newsroom soon.
And we’re creating a “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQ) list for The Bee’s political coverage. This will be a living document where readers can ask questions and expect answers. Again, we plan to expand the FAQ to give you more insight into what we do throughout the newsroom.
Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results
Now President Trump turns his press anger from newspapers to Google:
“Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter at 5:24 a.m. “In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent.”
This study is quite helpful
This new study by the Media Insight Project is quite helpful as we explain ourselves to anyone interested. The twin surveys of both the public and journalists is about asking each group parallel questions about the public’s understanding of journalistic concepts, the public’s interactions with journalists, and how all of that affects people’s assessment of the news media.
The highlights:
—The findings released today reveal problems of miscommunication, as well as opportunities. They highlight shared ideals: for example, the public and journalists want the same things from the press — verified facts, supplemented by some background and analysis. But they also reveal dissatisfaction: many Americans think what they see in the news media looks largely like opinion and commentary — not the carefully reported contextualizing they hoped for.
Moreover, the public is confused by some basic concepts of news. Half do not know what an “op‑ed” is. More than 4 in 10 do not know what the term “attribution” means, and close to 3 in 10 do not know the difference between an “editorial” and a “news story.”
This is echoed by focus groups in which I have participated the last two years. The average reader has trouble seeing the difference between a signed commentary and a straight news report. The anti press critics remind us that this is the fault of the journalists who inject opinion into what are supposed to be objective news reports. Some are guilty of doing this, but not all, I hasten to add.
However, what I read here, and what I will remind my Columbia students consistently: we now must make a more conscious effort to exhaust our sources for information, keep our opinions out of straight news stories, clearly label commentaries, and, while not able to explain the entire profession, do our very serious best to make sure that individually we follow the rules and, in our own way, contribute to help readers understand our craft and its importance.
The challenge is there. So are the opportunities.
Of related interest
Reporters: stop calling everything “fake news”
https://www.poynter.org/news/reporters-stop-calling-everything-fake-news
Sarah Jeong and the need for newsrooms to stand up against online harassment
Weekend reads
Die Welt: Why half new subscribers churn first 3 months?