It is not news to tell you we are in the midst of a global crisis in media trust.
While I find some consolation in the fact that recent studies tell us that Canadians trust their news more than do news consumers in other parts of the world, the overall data on trust in journalism in Canada and beyond makes clear that serious news organizations such as the Star should not underestimate public skepticism about journalism.
Increasingly, in this time when misinformation can go viral across the internet and that vile f-word epithet (f— news) has been weaponized against journalists and news organizations, those of us who take journalistic responsibility seriously must take steps to show that we are real news.
To that end, the Star announced the good news this week that it is a partner in the , a global consortium of news organizations working together to improve trust in journalism.
This project, led by award-winning journalist Sally Lehrman and hosted by Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, aims to foster reader trust by helping to guide digital news audiences to reliable, credible news sources and making it clear to readers when they have found trusted sources amidst the noise and nonsense that can be found across the Internet and especially on social media. The project is funded by Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Google, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund and the Markkula Foundation.
In becoming part of this initiative, the Star joins a group of global news organizations committed to incorporating “Trust Indicators” into all digital content. These indicators are key transparency standards for news and information that help readers recognize the commitments and expertise behind trustworthy journalism.
Read more: pc28Star joins global Trust Project
These include a new “About Us” page that states clearly the Star’s mission, its ownership structure, leadership team and its key ethical standards. You can now find a link to that page on every piece of content on — as well as a link to the Star’s journalistic standards guide and a highly visible means to report an error. As the Star’s transparency reporter Kenyon Wallace told you on Tuesday, these indicators also include clear labels to help readers better distinguish between news, opinion, analysis, and sponsored content, as well as biographical details about our reporters that highlight their expertise and backgrounds.
What is trusted news? Across Torstar news organizations, we define trusted news as accurate, accountable and ethically produced. Being accurate means verifying information before sharing it – and correcting mistakes when they happen. Being accountable means being transparent and open about what we do and how we do it. Being ethical means producing news and information according to ethical standards as set out in Torstar’s recently updated Journalistic Standards Guide.
All these measures are key requirements for becoming part of the Trust Project. Its Trust Indicators are well-thought out signals for readers established by international news leaders following consultations with news audiences about what they believe makes journalism trustworthy. As Craig Newmark, one of the project’s funders told the Poynter Institute’s contributing editor David Beard in an interview , “News outlets want to make a statement, a credible statement, that they can be trusted. We need a Better Business Bureau, the equivalent of Consumer Reports (for journalism), but the first step is for a news outlet to come out credibly and say, ‘Hey, you can trust us’.”
While the work required to incorporate all of these trust indicators across all the Star’s digital content has been extensive in recent months, I think it also bears stating that the values that provide the foundation for these trust indicators are not new for the Star, a 126-year-old news organization that has put a high value on ethical journalism and accountability to its readers for many decades. For me, that is evidenced by the fact that the Star has had a public editor/ombudsman to respond to reader concerns about accuracy and ethics since 1972.
Still, given the current often nasty environment of online misinformation and mistrust in media throughout the world, it matters much that the Star do all it can to show you its strong commitment to delivering trusted news, information and content on all platforms.
