Be accountable

By Beau Baker.

One way institutions can earn the public’s trust is by holding themselves accountable for missteps and mistakes. That’s traditionally been the role of an ombudsman but there are few left in U.S. newsrooms. Financial strain and technological shifts did them in.

The New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger put it this way in a memo to staff when the paper eliminated its public editor position: “The responsibility of the public editor ― to serve as the reader’s representative ― has outgrown that one office.”

ESPN said much the same thing when dropping its public editor in 2018 and pointed to “real-time feedback as an effective substitute. “Access to the Internet and its social platforms has created a horde of watchdogs who communicate directly with us to share observations and questions,” said Editor-in-Chief Kevin Merida.

“Ombudsmen were invented before we had commenting. All we had was letters to the editor. It may be a position whose time has just come and gone. And unless you redefine it pretty drastically, I don’t know that it is a worthwhile expenditure,” says Jane Elizabeth of the American Press Institute.

Elizabeth Jensen, who has served as National Public Radio’s ombudsman since 2015, strongly disagrees. “I’ve heard it argued that Twitter or social media has become the ombudsman for news organizations,” Jensen said. “It’s precisely because there is so much noise – social media and elsewhere – that news organizations can certainly benefit from an ombudsman.”

Jensen writes a column on NPR’s website where she’s addressed “expert” disclosure, on-air corrections, and NPR’s decision to end comment sections.

“The media writ large, media organizations, newsrooms – are powerful institutions and there can be misconceptions, misperceptions that arise from their work,” Jensen said. “The more that journalists can explain, bring transparency to how their work is conducted and the ethical underpinnings of that work I think that goes a long way to building trust with an audience.”

Jensen says a lot of her work is aimed at helping the public understand what journalists do and why. But she is one of the last public editors in a major U.S. newsroom. While the position thrives internationally, as Poynter examined, a resurgence here doesn’t seem likely. So how are newsrooms to be held accountable without them?

Another means to accountability is the clarity and strength of an organization’s internal policies, including how it deals publicly with reporting errors or disciplining bad behavior.

Problem is, there seems to be quite a bit of inconsistency among newsrooms in how they carry out these policies.

After exposing the sexual assault history of film mogul Harvey Weinstein and jump-starting the #MeToo movement, the New York Times had to deal with complaints of sexual harassment against one of its own journalists. White House reporter Glen Thrush received what some saw as kid-glove treatment.

From the public view, Thrush’s two month “time-out” seemed like feeble punishment after other powerful men in the media had their careers come to an end over similar complaints.

“We’re in an era where I think people are demanding ounces of blood when they see something egregious,” says Lyle Muller, executive director-editor for the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism, or Iowa Watch for short.

Muller is veteran journalist who previously served as the editor at The Gazette in Cedar Rapids. He admits that disciplining reporters can be tricky, case-specific business – even thornier for smaller newsrooms with few reporters to begin with.

“A reporter used some coarse language on Twitter, so I asked that he be suspended. Another reporter came along and used coarse, unacceptable language in an email exchanged with a reader,” and was not suspended, Muller said. Why? “Well, at that point in time, in the second instance, if you had suspended the person, you’d have lost the coverage from a certain area.”

What Muller thinks is needed is a more public-facing response from reporters themselves. If journalists would be more forthcoming about their mistakes and engage audiences in an open manner, he thinks people might respond positively and perhaps demand less blood.

Accept public scorn and pledge to do better work. That’s what Bay Area KRON-TV’s Henry Wofford did after disparaging hip-hop mogul Sean “Puffy” Combs. “I want to offer a sincere apology to everyone I offended,” Wofford said on the air. “I promise I will learn from this mistake.”

As for the consistency of newsroom policy, Muller is realistic.

“There probably is a wide variety of thought from newsroom to newsroom about what’s acceptable and what isn’t and how you deal with it,” he said. “There are so many media outlets now that I believe there’s probably imbalance.”

On the other side of leniency is harsh reprimand. Newsrooms can be taken to task for what might be seen as too heavy a punishment. When the AP fired longtime reporter Bob Lewis for mistakenly reporting that a candidate for governor had lied to federal investigators, many journalists argued the punishment did not fit the crime. “If everyone who made a mistake was fired for it, we’d have empty newsrooms,” Scott Maier of the University of Oregon told the Washington Post.

It’s likely that disciplinary action will always be on a case-by-case basis. But when the public perceives different standards of punishment for more prominent journalists compared to the Bob Lewises of the reporting world, then trust may be undermined.

CNN host Fareed Zakaria was under fire in 2014 for perceived plagiarism after a suspension in 2012 for similar mistakes but this time, the network defended him, expressing “the highest confidence in the excellence and integrity” of his work.

Did CNN make an exception to the rule, or at least soften the blow to its star anchor? Or was the response measured and appropriate?  Zakaria’s former editor thinks he got off easy.

API’s Jane Elizabeth has worked in five different newsrooms and says there’s no standard approach to errors and ethical violations.

“There is a wide disparity on how each of those newsrooms disciplined reporters who made mistakes,” she said. “I mean, a mistake at one paper could result in a firing, and I know for a fact that it would not result in a firing at another paper.”

Elizabeth thinks newsrooms should take on more accountability when individual reporters screw up.

“It’s never just the reporter’s fault, even in the newsroom that has been cut to the bone, there’s always someone else who is reading the story or has some responsibility for the story besides the reporter,” Elizabeth says.

If newsrooms made more of an effort to explain their actions and offer atonement– not just from the reporter, from management too – it might show a greater commitment to accuracy and ethical behavior than the institutional posturing that often follows a screw-up.

Media criticism offers another avenue for holding newsrooms accountable and building public trust.

Brian Stelter of CNN is among the most celebrated and reviled media critics on the circuit. As the host of “Reliable Sources,” Stelter has high visibility and makes effective use of it in the age of Trump.  Stelter also has tackled the need for media literacy and for journalists to disclose their methods.

But to some, Stelter acts less like a media critic and more like a media “cheerleader.” His takes have been criticized as biased, or beyond the boundaries of his job. Stelter has also earned some ire for his surefooted, responsive persona on social media. He’s attentive to online discussion and uses Twitter to deploy criticism and deflect attacks.

Media critics can convey insights that help audiences understand newsrooms but also help them develop a healthy skepticism about what they hear, see or read. When consumers feel more engaged with and less estranged from the workings of news organizations, accountability prospers. A more discerning public might lead newsrooms to take a more thorough and transparent approach when mistakes are made.

Media criticism can also help cut through the noise when the news cycle obsesses over sensational stories that might lack substance. Fox News’ Howard Kurtz used the Stormy Daniels whirlwind to consider the perils of hype.

Unlike Stelter, Kurtz has found fault in the way the media is covering Trump.  It’s a critique quite at home under the Fox News banner and has fueled the argument that Kurtz’s work is shifting right of center. His recent book “Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press & the War over the Truth” has been criticized as an underreported piece of journalist shaming. Others say it’s a disservice to the profession.

Nonetheless, Kurtz’s “independent brand of media criticism” endures. His musings on the press’s “Trump trauma” are valuable contributions to the ongoing conversation about what the Trump-media showdown really means. Kurtz raises questions that most media outlets have not and wonders aloud if newsrooms are misguided in their reaction to the president. That seems spot on for an agent of accountability.

Not untouched by controversy, Kurtz has displayed the ability to publicly address his mistakes and let colleagues dress him down. Media critics are not unassailable and neither are their critiques.

Does media criticism simply feed generalized cynicism about the media? According to a 2013 study, the answer is no. But if a news organization really wants to benefit from having a media critic on staff, it should give its critics sanction to scrutinize its own behavior, especially in times of internal turmoil.

The Fourth Estate shouldn’t be walled off, even when mistakes or ethical missteps or reporting errors are embarrassing or potentially damaging to an institution’s reputation. News organizations should practice what they preach, and follow through with disciplinary measures that reflect the rigor of their reporting and their commitment to accountability.

Even without ombudsmen or public editors, newsrooms and journalists can be held accountable by media critics and their own internal policies. And they need to be explicitly public about their actions. Only by demanding the same accountability for their actions as they do from public officials can news organizations begin to regain the trust of an increasingly skeptical public.