Copy
View this email in your browser
Weekly actionable tips for journalists to earn and sustain trust

Today's trust tip: Use caution with labels like "conservative" and "Trump supporter"

Hi there. Joy here.

Earning trust is a day-to-day business. We're continually sending signals about our credibility, relevance and values. Today I have something I hope you will think about, and an invitation for you to consider.

As journalists, the words we use to label people and groups matter. As Mollie Muchna from our team wrote on Medium last week, words help shape public perceptions and dialogue. We suggest you aim for specificity — it strengthens the story and combats feeding meta-perceptions for groups you don’t intend. 

Think about the words journalists are using to refer to both the people who participated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol and to the various reactions among the half of the country that leans right. We've seen a whole range (as Quartz laid out here): protesters, rioters, pro-Trump extremists, Trump loyalists, Trump supporters ... each one carries with it a set of assumptions and a connotation. 

People won’t know your intention unless you explain it to them. They won’t know you discussed it internally, and they will fill in gaps with their preconceptions about you. You don't get automatic credit for your thoughtfulness and consistency. Take time to share your process with your audience, as WCPO's Mike Canan did online and on-air.

The label you choose sends a message about who you hold accountable for the actions. If you use the term conservatives, are you delineating between people who voted (or never voted) for Trump but condemn the insurrectionists? If you use Trump supporters, do conservatives who disdain Trump but voted for him think you intend that term to apply to them? Will they think you count them as the same as the extremists and conspiracy believers? Will they know you talked about the terminology at all?

As we choose words to describe what happened and who was involved, we have to be careful not to over-generalize or risk giving the impression (especially in headlines) that we put everyone who leans right in the same category as the rioters.

I wrote last month about the 90 percent of Republicans who say they don't trust the news and how our team is planning to delve into the problem. I used the word Republicans because the Gallup research I was citing asked participants to self-identify by political affiliation. But parties aren't monoliths, and words like conservative and liberal are open to interpretation. 

I posed 10 questions in that post that I think journalists need to be asking ourselves. Questions like: 
  • Are we committed to reflecting diversity of thought and perspective across our communities, and to hosting conversations that bridge those divides?
  • Are we talking about any implicit political bias that might be present in our newsrooms and how to acknowledge and compensate for it?
I'd like to add a few today, and invite you to share your thoughts with our team at Trusting News. 
  • Are you being careful with how you characterize conservative community members and viewpoints in your coverage of the attack, and with how you talk about them in the newsroom? 
  • Rather than focusing on ideology or party, could you frame coverage around being pro-democracy? Or being aligned with facts versus divorced from them?
  • Are you working to understand the nuance of political views in your community, and does your coverage reflect that nuance?
As part of our work on this topic, we'd like to help journalists better understand what gets in the way of trust with the people in their communities who lean right. What are their perceptions of your work, and what are they looking for from you? A few years ago, we created an interview guide for journalists to use in their communities. We worked with newsrooms to conduct 81 interviews about perceptions of news. We're going to do that again, and we're looking for newsrooms interested in participating. 

Q: Would your coverage and your staff benefit from deep conversations with conservatives in your coverage area? 
Q: Would you appreciate our team's support to guide and set up those conversations?
Q: Would you be willing to share what you learn with us, so we can analyze responses across the country and share them with the industry?

If you answered "yes" to any of those questions, fill out this form. You'll hear more about our plans and how we could help you.

Thanks for reading. 

— Joy Mayer, Trusting News director
Check out our website
Follow along on Medium
Twitter
Facebook
Email

Trusting News aims to demystify trust in news and empower journalists to take responsibility for actively demonstrating credibility and earning trust. It is a project of the Reynolds Journalism Institute and the American Press Institute

Copyright © 2021 Trusting News, All rights reserved.


Were you forwarded this email? Subscribe here
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp