How to rebuild trust in the news

News organisations need to be proactive in their efforts

On my journey to and from HBM Advisory’s global HQ every day I pass a house next to the train tracks in north London that displays a sign designed to catch the eye of commuters. The house’s owner has over the years posted an eclectic range of slogans in letters that are probably three feet high.

“Always seek your own truth”; “Ask yourselves why no action”; “What makes you feel alive?”; and, famously and inexplicably, “Cayenne pepper”. Each one typically remains in place for a few weeks before being replaced.

In recent weeks, the slogan has been, for me at least, a troubling one. The banner says: “Newspapers do not always print fake news.”

Wait a minute, “not always”? As an industry we’d say we never publish fake news, at least not wittingly. But here, our sloganeer is implying that we do so more often than not; indeed, close for some to think it's “always”. Even worse, his intent might even be to be supportive of newspapers – telling his viewing public that the press are not quite as bad as they think.

There are certainly plenty of people who instinctively believe that news organisations do indeed routinely publish fake news. And this is something we must address. We can’t just say that we are living in a global environment where there is low trust in institutions per se and that we are just collateral damage. But how do we convince the public?

First up we need to really spell out for people the efforts we go to make sure we are reporting truthfully, as best we can. Most people do not realise that almost everywhere stories need to be double sourced before they are published. I’m convinced they believe that if a journalist is told something consequential or juicy then they will rush to print it (journalism-based TV dramas don’t help in this respect).

The idea that newsrooms conform, by and large, to strict sets of standards, both internal and external, will also be news to many. What percentage of the public do you think know that large numbers of newsrooms operate a “no surprises” policy in relation to the people they write about, always telling them what’s coming? Or that there are strict rules about how anything relating to children can be covered? Or that in the UK the libel laws require the defendant in cases to prove what they are saying is true? The reason the public doesn’t know these things is because we haven’t told them enough. We need to.

Another area where we need to be more open is in relation to our mistakes. At The Times, the standards editor Ian Brunskill wrote a weekly email to staff outlining the most egregious cases of what we had got wrong and how we might avoid such mistakes in future. It was often a sobering read but his occasionally withering tone was also richly comic (if it wasn’t directed at you).

I always thought we should publish each week’s email on our website for the world to see, but that was rejected. I think that was a bad call – we need to hang it all out there, good and bad, so that people believe us when we say things are true. Admitting when we got things wrong only helps in that respect.

American newspapers are almost fanatical about their corrections of even the most minor mistakes. Sometimes it seems pernickety to acknowledge, as the Wall Street Journal did last week at the bottom of a story about wildfires in Washington state, that: “Roughly 560,000 people live in Spokane County. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said roughly 230,000 people live in the county. That is the population of the city of Spokane.” But in the long run, that matters. The act of correcting even a small mistake shows that everything else that didn’t need to be is true. More papers should do this.

Where possible they should also explain how reporting for a particular story was done, especially if it’s controversial or a complicated investigation. The simple act of talking readers through the steps involved in bringing a story to their screens or breakfast tables will over time build trust. Every reporter and editor who has spent time dealing with a lawyer’s red lines on their copy knows how much effort goes into getting the story spot on – but invariably that process is kept out of sight.

This may be a more controversial suggestion but in the UK in particular, and especially among political journalists, we need to wean ourselves off anonymous sources. Nothing screams “fake news” like an unattributed quote that is pithy, witty and perfectly fits the thesis of the article. One reporter is notorious for always having a string of off-the-record quotes in their articles from politicians who, uncannily, all sound exactly like they do. If we want to bring trust back to the industry, this is something we have to stop.

My main point though is that we must not be passive and accept that trust in news is on an inevitably downward trajectory. We can do something about it. Look, even the sloganeer thinks all is not lost – we don’t always print fake news.

I’m taking some time off work for a summer break. This newsletter will return when I do at the end of the month.