The press. The fourth estate. The watchdogs. These are names journalists call themselves, names that hint at the integrity and importance of their profession. But who are journalists, really? And why does knowing them matter?
Journalists tell the public about themselves in a variety of ways–through professional biographies, websites, blogs and social media accounts. These sources show news consumers who is behind the stories they read and even how the stories are produced. In a time where journalists are constantly criticized for being biased and untrustworthy, this kind of disclosure may be one way to regain public trust.
Public perception
There’s lots of research on how trust in the news media is declining and what links public trust and journalism. However, there isn’t much data on the influence of personal disclosure. Most of this larger research focuses on media organizations as opposed to individual journalists.
Bernd Blöbaum, a 2013 visiting Reuters fellow at Oxford University, says trust in journalists has its roots in the overall trust in journalism in general and in specific trust of the news organizations journalists work for. “In general, no personal relationship between audience and journalists exists,” Blöbaum writes. “The recipients’ trust relationship is not linked to an individual journalist (though there may be exceptions) but to the professional role of the journalist.”
Blöbaum makes a clear distinction between journalists as professionals and as individuals. He stresses that trust stems from professional performance, and that journalists should stick to the values, norms and ethics of journalism.
Other research defines the intersection between professional and individual.
A recent survey by the Editorial Integrity for Public Media Project, a public radio collaboration, asked what journalists think they should be allowed to take part in personally while still maintaining professional integrity and independence from outside influence. According to a Current article, a little over half of the journalists surveyed (57 percent) felt they should be free to express some general opinions and participate in non-political community activities that don’t intersect with the issues they are likely to cover. But more than twice as many (34 percent) said journalists should refrain from expressing opinions at all as said they should be free to express their opinions about anything they choose (16 percent).
The 473 journalists surveyed generally agreed that rules can’t determine what they should or shouldn’t do in their personal lives—it’s a gray area. However, they also agreed that disclosure of personal activities and discussion of their potential conflicts are important—within newsrooms. With the public? That’s unclear.
To better understand public perceptions of and trust in individual journalists, I conducted my own short, social media survey.
Of the 60 respondents, 55 percent said they would like journalists to present themselves to the public professionally, but to also share some personality. The other 45 percent said journalists should be as professional as possible, only sharing what’s relevant to their work. When asked if understanding journalists, who they are and what they do, affects trust in journalism 55 percent said absolutely.
This survey, along with the other research cited, shows that trust in individual journalists is a part of trust in journalism overall. It’s clear we need further research on trust in individual journalists to better understand how it could help journalism as a whole regain public trust.
How much to disclose?
The survey I conducted also asked respondents to identify what they would like to know about journalists. They could pick any of ten options: background information, education, political leaning, personal opinions, investments, personal relationships, contact information, photos, reporting strategies and personality. The top pick was reporting strategies at 67 percent, followed by personal relationships at 55 percent and education at 53 percent.
The responses suggest the public wants to know journalists both professionally and personally. But if there are no rules on how to disclose and little data on what the public wants or needs to know to trust individual journalists, then how do we know what’s too much? Or not enough?
Jeff Jarvis, a professor at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism and leader in online news development, has advocated for journalist disclosure for over a decade. In 2006, when Jarvis got ahold of the questionnaire The New York Times required freelance writers to answer about their personal activities and potential conflicts of interest, he suggested every journalist fill it out and make it public. On his BuzzMachine blog, Jarvis answered the questions himself and challenged other bloggers to answer the questions and post them to pressure mainstream journalists to do the same. CBS News’ Vaughn Ververs met Jarvis’ challenge, and the idea gained some traction but never really took off.
Now over ten years later, Jarvis’ views remain relatively unchanged. “Disclosure is critical,” he said in an email. “The people we serve deserve to know our perspectives and experience so they can judge our work accordingly. We should ask what our readers should know about us. We should ask our readers to judge our work based on our intellectual honesty.”
Jarvis went on to describe a conversation he once had with a New York Times editor. The editor argued that just because a religion reporter, say, reveals that she was raised Catholic, that does not mean anyone can then presume to know what she thinks about issues like abortion and gay marriage. Jarvis agrees, but says knowing about the reporter’s background has value.
Jay Rosen is another journalism professor and prominent voice in restructuring the way journalism is produced, distributed and optimized for trust. Rosen writes PressThink, a project of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University where he writes about the news media.
In a 2010 PressThink piece, originally a lecture, Rosen gives this advice to the next generation of journalists: “In your bid to be trusted, don’t take the View From Nowhere; instead, tell people where you’re coming from.”
Rosen defines the view from nowhere as having no view, no stake, no perspective—essentially the ideal of objectivity. But, instead of “floating above” the public, Rosen says journalists need to let our audiences know where we’re coming from. If we do, trust will be easier to negotiate. If transparency is the new objectivity, as some scholars argue, a disclosure ethic that includes personal bias, or a view with a voice, could become the new norm.
But not all journalists support that approach. Marc Ambinder, contributing editor for the Atlantic, argues that if he were to tell people where he is coming from, really tell them, he’d be writing a fifteen page personal essay, an “endless and self-justifying series of rhetorical loops.”
Besides, he said, it’s really not necessary. “We are not Supreme Court nominees, though perhaps we ought to be evaluated like them: we’ve got a paper trail that pretty effectively gives people a window into our thinking when such a window is required to better tell the story.”
So how much is too much? It’s unclear. Too much can turn into a diary or as Ambinder says, “a sloth pit of selfishness” if it doesn’t directly link to journalists’ work, or help them tell better stories. Too little reinforces the horizontal barrier between journalists and the public, where journalists exist above any opinions or views and in a false state of objectivity. The solution likely lies somewhere in the middle, a balance of sharing the perspectives and experiences of journalists without disclosing every perspective and experience they’ve ever had—journalists bring their views to their reporting when it is relevant.
Where to disclose
For the most part, what journalists disclose about themselves is contained in biographies on news organization websites, professional accounts (like LinkedIn), personal websites and social media. On many news sites, you can click on a byline and it will take you to a short biography, a list of articles the author has written for that site and contact links.
However, some news sites disclose more about their journalists than others. Journalists at Recode, a Vox media website focused on the technology business, add an ethics statement to their bios, detailing any and all potential conflicts of interest. The first sentence of every statement reads: “Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.”
On Wirecutter, a product-review site owned by The New York Times, writers include the research behind their choices and are required to spell out why you should trust them. While this may not be practical for hard news sites, it could be an effective way tobolster the credibility of investigative pieces, or stories with controversial elements.
One common trend across news platforms is linking to journalists’ social media accounts, like Twitter, as contact information instead of an email or phone number. For example, the New York Times makes it much easier to get in touch with reporters through Twitter than the Times’ website. Online, you have to navigate to a contact page to find a list of names, then click on a name and then a story to find an email. By conrtast, the New York Times Journalists list on Twitter is one-stop shopping for most of the paper’s journalists. Using social media as a primary contact may make journalists more accessible and personable to younger generations, but may alienate them from people who don’t tweet.
In the last question of the survey I conducted, I asked, “Do you feel you know enough about individual journalists to decide whether or not to trust their work?” Respondents split almost evenly between yes and no. If half of the public wants to know more, journalists should consider presenting additional information about themselves as a way of helping to build public trust in journalism.
Maddie Vincent is an Environmental Science and Natural Resource Journalism graduate student at the University of Montana. She was born in Butte, Montana, but spent the majority of her childhood in Des Moines, Iowa. She’s a former UM women’s soccer player, rock band vocalist and high school band nerd.
