Transparency in journalism isn’t a new idea, but it’s more important than ever
By: Joy Mayer
Tags: Transparency, Trust, Journalism

Calls for transparency in journalism are everywhere these days.

A recent high-profile request comes from the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy. In its February report, the commission made 10 recommendations for restoring trust in media and democracy. One was:

“Practice radical transparency. The media should develop industrywide, voluntary standards on how to disclose the ways they collect, report and disseminate the news.”

It seems like a good time to pause and acknowledge that, while transparency is trendier than ever, it certainly isn’t new.

In 2014, Craig Silverman wrote a report for the American Press Institute dedicated to building journalistic credibility through transparency. The report addressed how journalists should explain their sourcing, offer disclosures, share their values, invite audience collaboration and correct errors. Silverman quoted The Elements of Journalism, a book by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. He wrote:

Kovach and Rosenstiel highlighted two key transparency questions journalists should ask themselves in the course of their work: “What does my audience need to know to evaluate this information for itself? And is there anything in our treatment of it that requires explanation?” These go to the heart of transparency.

The authors of The Elements of Journalism, which was first published in 2001, also wrote:

Transparency … signals the journalist’s respect for the audience. It allows the audience to judge the validity of the information, the process by which it was secured and the motives and biases of the journalist providing it.

Two motivations for transparency

Journalistic transparency is sometimes referring to matters of disclosure. These elements are designed to engender trust by showing that we’re willing to draw attention to matters that might influence our work. It might be appropriate, for example, to reveal that the subject of a story has also been a donor to a news organization. Or a journalist’s staff bio might reference her financial investments, her community involvement or her family’s connections to an issue of high interest. (Kara Swisher’s Recode bio is such an example.)

This idea of understanding where a journalist is coming from was the topic of a 2009 post from David Weinberger titled “Transparency is the new Objectivity.” He wrote:

What we used to believe because we thought the author was objective we now believe because we can see through the author’s writings to the sources and values that brought her to that position. Transparency gives the reader information by which she can undo some of the unintended effects of the ever-present biases. Transparency brings us to reliability the way objectivity used to.

In addition to disclosure, transparency can also refer to a broader kind of storytelling around journalism’s motives, values and processes. We know that news consumers do not have deep knowledge of how journalism operates (as this 2018 API study lays out clearly). And when there is a void of understanding, they are not often giving us the benefit of the doubt.

We have an opportunity to answer questions like:

What motivates our coverage, and why are we doing this specific story?

Why did we talk to these people and refer to these documents? What work did the reporter do that isn’t visible in the finished story?

What ethical decisions did we make along the way, and what policies guided those decisions?

How did we we work to be fair in this story? How were we careful to remain free from influence?

Here’s an example of a Trusting News training at Yle in Helsinki, where I discuss some of key ways we can build trust and transparency between newsrooms and their audiences.

Making the case for transparency

The Center for Media Engagement published research in February that speaks directly to this topic. It was done in collaboration with Trusting News, a project I run that empowers journalists to demonstrate credibility and actively earn trust. We worked with two newsroom partners to add behind-the-scenes information alongside a story. The information was not cumbersome to add, and the research found that it clearly increased trust.

Results showed that the presence of the “explain your process” box boosted people’s perceptions of the news organization on 11 of the 12 items related to trust. These were: transparent, informative, accurate, fair, tells the whole story, reliable, credible, unbiased, trusted, has integrity, and reputable.

Transparency in some forms does have its critics. In a recent piece for the Columbia Journalism Review, Alex Pareene explored the idea of behind-the-scenes stories. He wrote that descriptions of how journalism’s sausage gets made can be self-indulgent. They can also be really boring. (It turns out not everything about journalism is fascinating!) Separate behind-the-scenes stories are also mostly likely to reach the people who are already committed news consumers, thereby preaching to the choir.

I don’t dispute those claims, but I don’t accept them as the final word either. Here are a few points to keep in mind:

It might be true that only our most dedicated readers will click through to a separate story explaining how reporting was conducted. So let’s not leave that information there. Let’s take advantage of users’ attention where we have it by adding it into a story or alongside it. Make it harder for people to consume your most important journalism without also learning something about your ethical decision making, your motivations and your values. Inject those messages everywhere you share your content — on air, in print, online, in newsletters and on social media.

It’s true that the information will not change the mind of users determined to find fault with your work. But remember that people fit on a spectrum of trust. One end of the spectrum holds journalism’s harshest critics, and connecting with them might be futile. But what about the rest of your users?

Plenty of news consumers fall into the middle of the spectrum. They’re skeptical of what they see and confused about what to trust. They’re trying (with varying degrees of effort) to make sense of the media landscape, and they’re looking for credibility signals.

Let’s also not neglect the choir we’re preaching to — the people inclined to trust responsible journalism. They are ripe to evangelize on behalf of journalism. They could be deployed to defend the profession in general and your news organization specifically. To do that, we can move them from a general feeling of trust toward sharing evidence of our credibility. Transparency elements give them something concrete to point to as they refute criticism and champion journalism as a responsible public service.

Journalism’s purpose, motivation, ethics and processes need to be explained. There is a void of understanding on the part of the public, and it’s our job to fill it — repetitively and in as many ways as possible. If not us, who?

So what should journalists do?

Trusting News newsroom partners experiment with ways to seamlessly invite their users behind the scenes of their work. Our next post explores best practices of journalistic transparency from across the industry.

Joy Mayer is the founder and director of Trusting News. For help earning trust, subscribe to the Trust Tips newsletter, and request a free trust coaching session. Joy is also the community manager for Gather, a platform to support engaged journalism.