Restoring trust in ‘all the news that’s fit to print’

With news media credibility continuing to sink faster than George Voinovich at a John Bolton pool party, editors everywhere are struggling mightily to figure out what they can do to restore their readers’ trust.

At the New York Times, long the nation’s most authoritative newspaper but -- thanks in large part to Jayson Blair -- the one that suffered the most damaging of the recent episodes of fictionalized, plagiarized, inaccurate and inadequately authenticated journalism, that struggle led to the appointment of a committee of top staffers to examine the culture of the newsroom and come up with recommendations to “increase readers’ confidence in the Times.”

The committee filed its 14-page report, “Preserving Our Readers’ Trust,” to Bill Keller, the executive editor, on May 9. I mentioned briefly in last week’s column the Times committee’s strongly worded proposals for reducing the number of unnamed sources in the paper -- and its equally strong insistence that when unnamed sources are used, the paper be “more diligent” in describing those sources “more fully.”

Newsweek is the latest major news organization to be damaged by its reliance on an unnamed source, having had to retract last week a story saying that an internal military investigation had discovered that U.S. interrogators had flushed a Koran down a toilet at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. When Newsweek’s single, unnamed source for that item subsequently said he couldn’t be absolutely sure he’d seen the information about the Koran in the report he’d originally identified to Newsweek, the magazine first apologized, then retracted the story.

It’s difficult to know now whether the use of an unnamed source or the incremental nature of the retraction will be more harmful to Newsweek’s reputation. That may depend on what any further governmental investigation and/or Newsweek reporting turns up about whether the event actually took place.

Regardless, I’m convinced that significantly reducing the number of unnamed sources could go a long way toward restoring the public’s trust in the news media.

But as the New York Times committee report said, there is much else the media can and should do to regain that trust. Perhaps the most obvious is, in the committee’s words, “reducing factual errors.”

Errors are inevitable in a daily newspaper. Maybe not the 3,200 errors that the Times committee said the paper printed corrections about last year, but reporters and editors produce an enormous amount of copy every day in a paper the size of the New York Times -- or the Los Angeles Times -- much of it under deadline pressure, and mistakes will be made, no matter how careful and how diligent everyone is.

The key is for everyone to be as careful and diligent as possible, to “check, double-check and triple-check,” as my father ceaselessly said to me about just about everything in life.

I’ve long since lost track of the number of times that readers from all walks of life have told me, “Any time I read anything in the paper that I know anything about, it’s wrong.”

Newspapers have to redouble their efforts at accuracy so that this is no longer true or they won’t have a chance to regain their readers’ confidence, certainly not in an Internet-fueled media climate in which every error is instantly noted, ridiculed and widely disseminated.

Since journalists are only human -- some cyberspace observations to the contrary notwithstanding -- newspapers will never be error-free. That means, as the Times committee said, that in addition to trying to reduce errors, newspapers have to track their errors to see “how the mistake happened and how it could have been avoided.”

It also means newspapers have to be prompt and diligent in correcting their errors -- and not just relatively minor errors like misspellings and incorrect dates. They should take advantage of their websites to post and archive corrections “as promptly as possible,” to again quote the New York Times committee.

I don’t mean to suggest that the New York Times -- or its special committee, known officially as the Credibility Group -- has all the answers. But its recent problems notwithstanding, the Times remains the most influential daily newspaper in the country. The appointment of this committee -- and editor Keller’s pledge to work with Al Siegal, the committee chairman, to “devise an implementation plan that ... attempts to hardwire these guidelines into the newsroom operations” -- makes clear the paper’s commitment to rebuilding reader credibility.

Given the Times’ stature, the Siegal committee report could easily become a template for other newspapers. Among the committee suggestions I liked most were those calling for clarifications along “the news/opinion divide.”

When television began to supplant newspapers as the place most Americans went to first for news, newspapers countered by providing more analysis, context and perspective, things that television couldn’t -- or wouldn’t -- do as well.

Over the years, on many stories, in many papers, the lines between analysis and commentary have often become blurred, and this has contributed to the perception that news stories often contain the writer’s opinion and that newspapers have an ideological bias.

The Siegal committee urged that all commentary be clearly labeled as such and said editors must make sure that news stories, even those occasionally written by columnists, observe “the usual constraints and be free of editorializing.”

The committee also said the paper should “create a procedure for systematically watching the cumulative impact of continuing stories that risk conveying an impression of one-sidedness.”

In addition, the committee said Times editors should be “more alert to the nuances of language when writing about contentious issues.” Coverage of abortion, terrorism and the Middle East in particular trigger reader criticisms of media language choices. When does a “fetus” become a “baby”? Who’s a “terrorist” and who’s a “freedom fighter”?

The Siegal committee devoted several pages of its report to what it called “A Dialogue With Our Publics” and “Reaching Out to Readers.”

Many readers have long complained that newspapers and the people who produce them are aloof, impersonal and unresponsive. One of the many appeals of the Internet is its interactivity. People who go online for news or any other information or entertainment feel as if they’re connecting with other human beings. They can e-mail, go into chat rooms, post on bulletin boards. Their views are heard, their questions and criticisms answered.

That’s why, when I started writing this column (and my weekly Food section column), I asked that my e-mail address be published at the bottom of every column. I try to answer every e-mail I receive, even those that engage in nasty, ad hominem personal attacks.

The Siegal committee recommended that the Times “create technology that allows readers to e-mail reporters and editors while shielding our staff members from spam and harassment.” I don’t know how they’ll protect staffers against harassment, but the e-mail contact is worth the risk.

Siegal’s committee also proposed that the paper’s website “conduct frequent Q&A; forums with department heads and other senior editors and should set up mechanisms to give readers greater access to key source documents, interview transcripts and databases used in stories and graphics.”

In addition, the paper should “explore the possibility of creating a Times blog that promotes a give-and-take with readers while satisfying the standards of our journalism.”

Many other newspapers -- including the Los Angeles Times -- are discussing or have already started blogs on or associated with their websites. Editors everywhere are worried about how to do them in a way that is consistent with the journalistic standards of their printed editions.

Connecting with readers and taking advantage of new technology are admirable objectives. But the steady decline in circulation and the recent outbreak of journalistic screw-ups notwithstanding, good newspapers remain a reliable source of news for tens of millions of Americans. Newspapers shouldn’t sacrifice their strengths in a misguided effort to regain their audience. Blogs could be beneficial to newspapers. The spontaneous, unfiltered quality that helps give most blogs their appeal may, however, prove incompatible with the more considered, multilayered process on which the better newspapers pride themselves.

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Speaking of accuracy and credibility: Sandy Johnson, Washington bureau chief for Associated Press, says I misquoted her in my column last week on White House background briefings. She did not dispute most of what I attributed to her, but she did say two phrases were incorrect. Although reporters often look at the White House “chat line” that she mentioned in our interview, it is intended for the public, so she says she wouldn’t have said that Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, had “put two National Security Council aides ... on the White House chat line to ‘talk’ with reporters,” as I quoted her saying. She also says she doesn’t know what AP reporters (or anyone else) might have gleaned from that particular online exchange, so she wouldn’t have said, as I quoted her saying, that the information offered by the aides was “not very” valuable.

My notes, typed as I interviewed Johnson, reflect that I quoted her accurately in both instances, but she disagrees, and it is certainly possible that I misheard or misunderstood her. If so, I apologize.

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David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com.