Such clarification might consist of a regularly published or broadcast
statement of purpose with an accountability process for consumers.
Additionally, one could offer better labeling for different kinds of news,
putting "Tabloid Titillations" under one heading, "Congressional Action" under
another, and so on. The Washington Post's Digital Ink online news
service relegates trivia and rumors to an "Is That True?" segment that will
include entertaining rumors and gossip, preventing them from displacing the
real news of the day.
When St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editor Bill Woo invited citizens into daily
news planning meetings, he discovered that many brought negative stereotypes
about the news business. "It's good to have people in to see us as a quite
ordinary collection of men and women figuring out what we're going to do. It
breaks down the notion that we are working in some kind of cabalistic fashion,"
he says.Washington Post columnist David Broder
is one of the few journalists who regularly writes a column confessing his
bloopers for the previous year. This practice has hardly hurt his credibility;
if anything, it has strengthened his reputation.
Lani Guinier provided this definition of fairness to the American Society of
Newspaper Editors:
If they don't make these efforts, journalism could well end up as "roadkill on
the information superhighway."116
In my view, fairness means a balance of perspective, not the absence of a
viewpoint. In my view, fairness means intellectual diversity, not merely racial
diversity. In my view, fairness means inclusion, not exclusion, of all relevant
viewpoints...fairness does not mean simply looking for extremes on either end
of the spectrum in order to present a controversy, but being prepared to show
the nuance, to show the complexity, to show the range of viewpoints that may
enlighten, not just entertain.114 Developing a trustworthy product is the first
priority for building the brand that draws the loyal niche audience.
