An endangered species: the news council
America's last press council operates in Seattle. But even the Washington News Council is gasping for money.
You can forgive John Hamer for feeling as if he’s the last of his kind. In a real sense, he is.
Hamer is president and executive director of the Washington News Council, the last operational news council in the United States.
Not too long ago, the council received what will be its final disbursement from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Thanks to the support of William H. Gates Sr., the Gates Foundation has provided $100,000 in matching-grant funding annually for the last three years to help keep the WNC operating. Now Hamer is hunting for new funding to keep the doors open after the Gates money is spent.
“It’s a fragile existence,” he told me. “When I got into journalism 35 years ago, I never thought I’d be doing this.”
News councils, also referred to as press councils, are self-regulatory bodies that aim to provide a forum for members of the public to raise concerns and complaints about press coverage and media conduct. They provide a place for citizens and organizations to turn in order to get a fair hearing, without having to hire a lawyer and seek satisfaction in the justice system.
At the same time, press councils are meant to help ensure governments don’t feel compelled to create legislation that may infringe on freedom of the press and freedom of speech. By taking care of our own house, the logic goes, the government won’t feel tempted to try and restrain the press.
The oldest news council in the United States, the Minnesota News Council, closed early last year. It held its first hearing in 1971. Two years later, the National News Council was established as a larger initiative to bring press self-regulation to the United States.
“The national council, assailed by prominent critics like former New York Times Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal, limped along for 10 years before fizzling out,” reported American Journalism Review.
Starting in the 1970s, news councils emerged in different states, such as Hawaii, but soon died out. Meanwhile, these entities are well established in Scandinavia and other parts of the world. The British Press Complaints Commission and its precursors have operated for decades. The PCC is about to be overhauled in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry, which is expected to deliver a report in the fall.
Hamer would like to see news councils make a comeback in the United States. But at the moment he’s more focused on ensuring the WNC is still operating this time next year. Hamer said he needs to find at least $100,000 in new funding for the WNC to survive.
“We are definitely in a kind of transition year,” Hamer said. “We got the last Gates Foundation check earlier this year and we’ve spent some of it.”
To that end, the WNC recently held what may be seen, in the not too distant future, as a watershed moment in its rebirth, or a last gasp of a dying idea. The hearing showcased why news councils were useful in the first place, and why they could still be important to communities and the press. It also offered a glimpse into what a new type of more open and participatory news council might look like.
Chester Harris is a custodian at Leschi Elementary School in Washington state. He was also recently the target of what the WNC, a litany of complainants and other members of the public deemed an inaccurate, sensationalized and altogether shameful bit of reporting by Chris Halsne, an investigative reporter with KIRO7 TV news.
The evidence against Halsne’s work is overwhelming. You can read summaries from The Stranger, Crosscut, Seattle Weekly, and iMediaEthics. You can also watch a full video of the resulting WNC hearing here, and view Halsne’s original reports here.
In May, Halsne broadcast three reports accusing Harris of violence towards students, along with other accusations that made the custodian sound like a danger to kids and the school.
The news council was flooded with complaints from parents and school employees, Harris’ union, and other interested parties. Asked to respond to the concerns, KIRO issued a statement: “KIRO TV stands by its stories.” It declined to participate in a mediation process or to engage with the news council.
That meant the WNC proceeded with what’s usually a last resort: a public hearing. KIRO never responded to the WNC, school officials, parents, teachers, Harris, his union, or any of the journalists who subsequently wrote about the hearing.
“If you stand by your stories, okay, stand by them in public,” Hamer told me. “What is wrong with that? They don’t want to answer questions or face a fair-minded board of news council members who will ask probing questions.”
The WNC invited complainants and members of the public to the hearing. It also assembled a panel of current or emeritus members of its board, many of whom are or were journalists.
Just in case KIRO sent someone at the last minute, there was a chair and name card set up for the station. Its absence meant the hearing was conducted in the presence of an empty seat bearing a KIRO name placard. (Again, you can watch the full hearing online here.)
That empty chair may be a striking image, but it’s the hearing itself, and how it was conducted, that provides a glimpse at how Hamer is trying to make the news council relevant and establish its place in the American press.
“I fervently hope this will help,” he said.
As with The Guardian’s “open journalism” and other moves towards transparency in news, Hamer is hoping part of the salvation for the WNC lies in involving the public in more of the process.
One goal of the hearing was for the WNC panel to vote on a series of questions about KIRO, its reporter, and the content of the reports. At the same time, everyone in attendance at the hearing was also invited to vote. So too were visitors to the WNC’s website.
No longer was a hearing just about a news council coming to a decision; it aimed to give the public a voice in evaluating the journalism in question. In the end, the votes from those in attendance and online were largely aligned with what the WNC panel decided.
The panel and the public voters — about 40 members of the live audience plus another 40 who voted later online — said the KIRO report was inaccurate, unfair, and unethical; that it violated the privacy of students and/or put them at risk; it failed to reach out to those involved for comment; and it damaged the reputations of Harris, the school, and others.
The WNC panel also voted that the station should retract and remove the offending stories, apologize, and deliver a follow-up.
Rather than just being a panel of insiders debating inside baseball and rendering a decision, the more open process gave the public a voice.
Like what you just read? Support high quality local journalism. Become a member of Crosscut today!
Twitter
Facebook
RSS Feeds
Comments:
Posted Thu, Aug 23, 5:32 a.m. Inappropriate
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Founded in January 2009, PubliCola is a blog about Seattle written by journalists who are dedicated to non-partisan, original daily reporting that prioritizes a balanced approach to news.
I'm gonna say the answer is no.
Posted Thu, Aug 23, 7:52 a.m. Inappropriate
Once the thieves have cleaned out the safe, it seems pointless to continue paying the guard to sleep at the door.
Posted Thu, Aug 23, 9:09 a.m. Inappropriate
BlueLight, you forgot the axiom about what the road to Hades is paved with.
Posted Thu, Aug 23, 9:36 a.m. Inappropriate
Light rail?
Posted Thu, Aug 23, 11:18 a.m. Inappropriate
No group can successfully, honestly, and correctly self-regulate its members. Doctors, lawyers, architects, realtors, bankers, etc. join the ranks of journalists who must have outside, independent regulation and scrutiny. The closest things to a news council that I see on the national landscape are Drudge, Breitbart, and Media Research Center. Non biased journalism died many years ago.
Posted Thu, Aug 23, 11:19 a.m. Inappropriate
Crosscut comments are (usually) serious and substantive, and truly address the key issues. To that end, I'd like to ask Crosscut's informed and thoughtful readers a few questions:
1. Have you or your organization ever been damaged by an inaccurate, unfair or unethical news story? If so, what did you do? Calls to the newsroom don't always produce results; online feedback gets lost in the digital deluge; letters to the editor may not fully set the record straight; libel suits are costly, time-consuming and very hard to win. The News Council at least gives people some recourse to make their case in an open public forum to a fair-minded hearings panel, half of whom are experienced journalists.
2. Have you watched any of our hearings online, especially our two most recent ones on major complaints against KUOW and KIRO? If not, please do. See http://wanewscouncil.org. I think you will agree that they were thorough, professional and even-handed discussions of media accuracy and ethics. Our process isn't perfect, but it does provide an opportunity for public debate about journalists' performance. The council's votes carry no legal sanctions. Our only power is publicity -- just like the media's. And at our last hearing, we not only invited the audience to vote along with our hearings panel, but we asked the general public to vote online as well. The results, posted on our website, gave citizens a voice in media oversight in addition to our Council members. We hope to do more online critique and analysis in the future. Please visit the WNC's Facebook page, where we post questions about media ethics and invite your comments.
3. Do you believe the news media should be transparent, accountable and open, just as they ask of those they cover? If not, why not? Isn't it a two-way street? If journalists did that, they would be more credible and trusted. See http://taoofjournalism.org for our latest project, which is gaining traction nationwide -- especially among young journalists.
For the past 14 years, the WNC has at least made an effort to hold the news media publicly accountable -- in much the same way that the media hold everyone else publicly accountable. 4. What's wrong with that?
I'm hoping Crosscut readers will weigh in here with informed, thoughtful, serious and substantive comments. The WNC is genuinely trying to help journalism at all levels -- print, broadcast, online, mainstream, legacy, new, independent, citizen, gonzo or whatever. We welcome constructive feedback and innovative suggestions. The news media are vital to our democracy. Help us help them get better.
Posted Thu, Aug 23, 2:35 p.m. Inappropriate
I was an early WNC board member and, as a former member, was on the most recent panel hearing the KIRO-TV complaint.
Media naturally resent a self-appointed body judging their policies and actions. On the other hand, unlike other professions, there is no self-policing body in journalism which attempts to maintain ethical and professional standards---even a body without power of enforcement. The WNC is a practical attempt to do that here. I have observed it in action and have not seen any abuses or attempts by board members to grind axes.
John Hamer has been a dedicated leader of the WNC. May he and it live long and prosper.
Posted Thu, Aug 23, 4:30 p.m. Inappropriate
Boardman's comments that, "The council’s greatest value is far more about education and community conversation than it is about accountability" miss the point. A community conversation will lack substance without accountability. For instance, the Leschi community could have screamed and wrote letters and called KIRO 7 until the cows came home, but they would just continue to be ignored. The WNC's hearing at Town Hall was almost like therapy for a tight-knit community that had been damaged by a reporter and a news organization disinterested in ethical journalism. Without that Hearing, the cries from Leschi would've continued falling on deaf ears.
Educating the community and helping lead a 'conversation' is all fine and good and worthwhile. But without accountability, its essentially meaningless. If a news organization can't hold itself accountable (with an ombudsman) than an outside organization must. The professionals running the WNC deserve to serve and they deserve financial support.
Posted Thu, Aug 23, 5:16 p.m. Inappropriate
Thanks to Ted Van Dyk, who was a valuable member of the WNC and our KIRO panel, for the encouraging words. I don't know who "anorthwood" is, but his/her comments are spot on and much appreciated. The WNC actually does lots of educational and conversational work and we have since 1998 (panels, forums, talks to community groups, mock hearings with high-school and college journalism students, etc.) But there is no substitute for an open public hearing at which media ethics and performance are discussed in depth and in detail. News media organizations must be as publicly accountable as they demand of everyone else. It's the only way they can ever hope to regain the trust and credibility that they have lost. Comments? Engage!
Posted Fri, Aug 24, 4:47 p.m. Inappropriate
trust, credibility, accountability are endangered. I don't think news consists of anything more than a bunch of propogandized drama queens. It's like a bad relationship, everyone sees it but the ones in IT.
Why cover stories about anything but what's is important to middle class americans, right now it's jobs, home values, grocery prices.
Instead we get the, vote for me, because i am not as crooked as the other guy slogan.
I could go on and on but then I would be your typical news channel.
Posted Fri, Aug 24, 7:06 p.m. Inappropriate
I've been told the Washington News Council holds dear the Code of Ethics as articulated by the Society of Professional Journalists. Really? How's these faring?
A journalist should:
- Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.
- Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.
- Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
- Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
- Encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media.
Think they're doing OK? Send a check to the Washington News Council. I'm sure they will take it.
Posted Thu, Aug 30, 10:44 a.m. Inappropriate
Great idea, BlueLight! Checks are welcome anytime. Or go to wanewscouncil.org and click on "Donate" button. If you believe in fair, accurate, transparent, accountable and open journalism, help support the WNC.
Login or register to add your voice to the conversation.