This archive report was first published on 11 July 2019.
Restoring Trust in Media ¶
Journalism is a critical public good, but discerning quality in the digital age has become increasingly complicated. With trusted brands like the BBC and The New York Times vastly outnumbered by upstart publications, blogs, and community reports, trust in news media has plummeted.
According to the Reuters Institute's Digital News Report 2017, only about 50% of users trust the media brands they choose to consume, and far fewer trust outlets they do not use. With too many options and too little confidence in media, nearly one-third of people have given up following the news altogether.
However, news journalism is not an expendable luxury. It enables citizens to make informed decisions and holds those in power accountable. Delivering quality journalism, however, is no straightforward task.
The first problem is that there is no clear definition of what constitutes quality journalism, which raises the risk that the standard of 'quality' will become a tool of censorship. When Adolf Hitler wanted a book burned, he would assert that it did not meet the 'standards' of Nazi ideology. Similarly, a government today could cite quality issues to attack critics' credibility or to justify denying them journalistic credentials.
Some organisations are trying to circumvent this danger by developing trust indicators, such as the Journalism Trust Initiative led by Reporters Without Borders. However, what exactly would these systems be certifying? The most logical answer might seem to be media organisations, but even first-class newsrooms produce plenty of second-class content.
Ultimately, individual organisations must take responsibility for the quality of their content and adhere to a set of rules, including oversight and editing, to ensure it. When this cannot be done within the organisation itself, external bodies could do the job. In establishing such systems, lessons could be learned from collaborative reporting projects like the one that covered the Panama Papers.
As technology advances, automated fact-checking could also be introduced, especially in less-resourced newsrooms. In an age of unprecedented access to information, people of all ages must improve their media literacy. But that does not let media organisations off the hook. With the help of an aware and critical audience, they must monitor themselves and one another, as they have done in the past.
— Alexandra Borchardt is Director of Leadership Programs at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
