For the Record
Dean Wright on Ethics, Innovation and Values
Audience and media: Can this marriage be saved?
Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.
Reuters recently hosted a panel at our New York headquarters called “Audience and the Media: A Shaky Marriage.” I was on the panel with a distinguished group: Lisa Shepard, ombudsman of National Public Radio; Andrew Alexander, ombudsman of The Washington Post; and Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor of The Associated Press. Jack Shafer, editor-at-large of Slate, was the moderator.
The key question we explored was: “How can mainstream news organizations retain (or regain) their audiences’ trust in a skeptical world where almost anyone with an Internet connection can be a publisher?” It will come as no surprise that we did not answer the question definitively in the 75 minutes we were on stage. However, a number of questions–some quite troubling–were raised. Rather than attempt to summarize all the points raised and positions taken by the panelists and the audience, I’ll explore some of the questions raised in my mind.
–Why do people mistrust the media and whose fault is it?
Much of the fault lies with the mainstream media. For far too many years, news organizations had an arrogant, one-way relationship with our audiences. We gathered news, packaged it in ways we thought made sense and shoveled it out to our audiences. If you liked what we delivered, fine. If not, well, you could always write a letter to the editor of the newspaper where you saw the story. Now I think the balance is much better. Feedback is instantaneous, transparency is the norm and our readers can also be publishers on their own.
On the other hand, much of the distrust is not our fault. Discourse–certainly in the United States– has become far more polarized and news consumers are seeking out news sources that support their own politics or world view. That makes it especially difficult for those of us who pride ourselves on being independent and free of bias. Readers sometimes see bias when a news report doesn’t support their particular world view.
Let’s remember that the idea of an unbiased and independent press is relatively new. Many news consumers around the world choose a news outlet that reflects their world view. I worry that a large cohort of news consumers now expect that–and prefer it.
I just left yahoo.com and changed my home page because I couldn’t stand being forced to go through FB to comment. Now, I just posted a comment on this site and got your message about censorship. Censorship is censorship not matter how you try to dress it up. And censorship is subject to ones opinion, that being the censors. Therefore, someone from your organization is telling the public what is acceptable to read and what is not. That is bias not matter how you look at it. It is subject to the opinion and interpretation of another. I agree that I read some pretty ignorant or angry, venting comments that I consider worthless. But after reading about 2 or 3, I move on. But that is according to my standards and what I consider to be of value. I can’t force that on someone else because it is my view. But you have taken away the power and control of the individual to determine for themselves what is of value and interesting and what is not and put it in the hands of those it shouldn’t be in. I think that this is a bad idea and that we have enough liberties being taken from us at record speed these days. The last thing we need is an open forum to become a censored one regardless of who likes what. I will stay with this site temporarily to see what you do about this. If I am not satisfied, I will move on. I still have the freedom to do that!