Last Updated: March 02, 1999
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Why newspaper credibility has been dropping
The public feels that newsroom values and practices
are sometimes in conflict with their own priorities for their newspapers.
The public brings to their reading of a newspaper a set of values and
priorities that are not always in step with newsroom traditions. Key gaps
include perceptions that newspapers sometimes sacrifice accuracy for speed
and that newspapers go after and publish information without enough attention
to the potential harm that could be caused by publication.
Since it’s logical to assume that readers come to the newspaper armed
with their own life experiences and values, this survey asked two sets
of questions to understand the kind of news judgments and priorities held
by the public. First, they were asked what direction they’d like their
newspapers to take.
Respondents were read sets of phrases, and asked to choose which one
better reflected their own preferences for newspaper coverage. Their responses
were remarkably consistent with the views and values they expressed elsewhere
in the research:
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The preeminent value of accuracy (with 87 percent saying they’d rather
see a paper hold a story until facts could be double-checked).
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The desire for context (with 68 percent selecting facts and explanations
that provide insight over just the facts).
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When earned with consistent execution of the above — the willingness of
a slight majority of adults (57 percent) to permit newspapers to get involved
in helping solve community problems rather than only reporting on them.
On both of the latter two dimensions, it’s the younger adults who drive
the overall scale. Adults over 45 are those who are significantly more
likely to want “just the facts, please” on both.
A second set of questions asked the public what they would do if asked
to make some of the tough judgment calls that editors are frequently called
upon to decide. Six hypothetical situations were designed to add a realistic
degree of difficulty to the expression of the public’s own news judgments.
Of the six news judgments they were asked to make, four appeared to
be easy choices to the vast majority of the public:
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80 percent of the public approves of the news media engaging in investigative
reporting.
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86 percent believe that the names of suspects should not be published until
formal charges are filed.
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68 percent say that a newspaper’s withholding information on a candidate’s
extramarital affair of 10 years previous was the right decision.
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75 percent would respect the family’s wish to keep the story of a child’s
fatal accident out of the paper.
What’s particularly interesting is the near absence of any variation in
these responses: young and old, rich and poor, “heavy” and “light” news
consumers all gave essentially the same survey responses. (Younger adults,
it should be noted, are the most sensitized to seeing privacy as a civil
right.)
Effectively, there don’t appear to be complicated situational ethics
that muddy the public’s steadfast adherence to seeing respect for personal
privacy and compassion for news sources as both valuable and valued journalist
traits.
For instance, when the question about the child’s accidental death was
posed to almost 100 focus group participants in eight different cities,
only a few people said they would run that story with the child’s name
and refuse the mother’s pleas. Some said:
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“It wasn’t a crime and it (the name) does not add anything to the story.”
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“(Using the name) is cold, tacky, insensitive. It’s irrelevant to the story,
and 99.9 percent of people don’t know the person anyway.”
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“It’s the microphone guys showing up that’s the real imposition on the
family.”
