News Council Lets People Who Are Mad at the Media Blow Off Steam : Minnesota: Private group provides an alternative to the courts for people who believe they’ve been wronged by newspaper and television reports.

When Sally Evert searched for reasons why she lost her seat on the Washington County Board, some of them turned up in the pages of her local newspaper.

Evert said the newspaper’s campaign coverage favored her opponent by, among other things, publishing a front-page article written by an opponent’s campaign worker who was not identified as such. The Stillwater Evening Gazette wasn’t completely responsible for her loss, Evert said, but was “one of the nails in the coffin.”

Evert turned to the Minnesota News Council, a group of journalists and other citizens that hears complaints against the news media. The council upheld her complaints.

“It certainly made me feel vindicated,” Evert said, “and I’ve had a lot of phone calls saying, ‘Well, you’ve won the battle, but you lost the war.’ Well, it feels good to win a battle.”

The council provides an alternative to the courts for people who believe they’ve been wronged by news organizations. Half of the 24 council members are representatives of the media; the others include a former Republican Party district leader and a rabbi. State Supreme Court Justice John Simonett presides over council hearings, where about a dozen members, half of them journalists, consider each complaint.

But the council faces a key hurdle--getting news organizations to support it. Although the panel has existed for 22 years, executive director Gary Gilson said he still spends much of his time persuading news executives to participate.

Minnesota’s group is the most prominent surviving example of a concept that has been tried elsewhere. A national news council, based in New York, struggled for acceptance for about a decade before disbanding in the early 1980s, Gilson said. There were efforts to organize councils in Wisconsin, North Dakota and Massachusetts, but none endured.

Local news councils are in place in Honolulu and in Littleton, Colo., and a pilot program based on the Minnesota council recently began taking complaints in Washington and Oregon. The Louisville Courier-Journal recently proposed a center for journalism ethics that would include a Kentucky News Council based on the Minnesota model.

People who bring complaints to the Minnesota council aren’t looking for money--they must waive their right to sue. Instead, they want vindication and an apology, Gilson said.

Mike Mahoney, publisher of the Evening Gazette, disagreed with Evert’s claims and the council’s decision. But he said he believes his newspaper received a fair hearing.

When Evert first complained to the Gazette, Mahoney gave her front-page space to respond to her opponent’s article, and published a new policy that the paper would run articles by candidates or their staff on inside pages.

Evert still pursued the matter with the news council, which, Mahoney said, “got down to measuring inches.” Mahoney said the council’s efforts have both merit and flaws.

“I can’t see a news executive in a metro area going to a prolonged hearing over something frivolous,” he said. “We’re all just too busy.”

The council has received about 1,200 complaints since it began 21 years ago. Most were dropped by the complainants, others were settled without a hearing or rejected by the council. Of the 7.5% that went on to a hearing, about half were decided against the news organization.

If a news organization that is the subject of a complaint agrees to appear before the council, it must agree to publish the result of the hearing if it loses.

Newspapers and broadcast stations aren’t required to appear before the council, but a strong incentive to cooperate is emerging. An insurance company, C. F. Lake & Co., is offering broadcasters discounts on libel and slander insurance if they agree to refer disputes to the news council and run announcements promoting it. A station could, for example, pay $500 instead of $2,500 for up to $1 million in coverage.

“Even if (the council) succeeds in stopping 25% of lawsuits, it’s a terrific idea,” said Gary Brown, assistant vice president of C. F. Lake.

Tim McGuire, executive editor of the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, said the council has kept his newspaper out of court a few times, mostly on what he describes as nuisance complaints.

The Star Tribune has both won and lost cases. In one instance, the newspaper went before the council on reader complaints about a 1988 story and photo essay profiling a pregnant, single, black teen-ager. Although the council sided with the paper, McGuire said the process led to a major project on racial issues that appeared two years later.

“As I looked around the room, I saw what had happened is the white people on the council had said we did the right thing and the two black people said we hadn’t,” McGuire said.

McGuire likes the news council concept, but he agrees it has flaws. The council doesn’t rely on precedents, limiting what news organizations can learn from council rulings, and active journalists on the council participate in hearings involving direct competitors. (Council members do abstain from cases involving their own news organizations.)

“I have always taken the position that I think what we have in Minnesota works OK--not tremendously, not great, but OK,” McGuire said. “I would not want to push it on other states.”

Gilson said news executives can avoid both news councils and the courts by apologizing for distortion as willingly as they apologize for factual errors.

“It’s really a cheap way to be a hero--to apologize,” Gilson said. “I mean, what does it cost you? And it wins you an awful lot.”