2005 Annual Report - Newspaper Public Attitudes

Credibility has been the subject of much study and hand-wringing within the industry for several decades now. It was the topic of a major research project of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), beginning in 1997 and concluding with publication of a credibility handbook in 2001. More recently the Associated Press Managing Editors persuaded 50 of its member papers to hold "credibility roundtables" with citizens in their communities.

The somewhat abstract problem got a human face in 2003 when The New York Times found that a reporter, Jayson Blair, had frequently plagiarized or fabricated material for his stories. Another Times reporter, Rick Bragg, was asked to resign over so-called "toe-touch" datelines - passing quickly through a town but constructing a story from an uncredited stringer's file.

In 2004, The Times got company when USA Today found that its star roving foreign correspondent, Jack Kelley, had fabricated some of his most dramatic stories, notably a first-person account of a café bombing in Israel. More than a dozen reporters around the country had been fired for lesser instances of plagiarism.

As newspapers set about writing more detailed ethics codes and smoking out offenders, they could take some cold comfort from surveys, which suggested that the Blair and Kelley incidents didn't seem to move the needle.⁹ Of course, credibility was abysmal in the first place.

Perhaps a more material consideration is that the majority in surveys who say they don't find newspapers believable represent a coalition of complaints - everything from thinking many stories are inaccurate or incomplete to claiming a paper is politically biased or too negative to business, government or a given town.

The ASNE credibility handbook adds additional criticisms: a sense that the paper is inaccessible or out of touch with its community, and not seeing one's concerns - especially those of minorities and young people - represented in print.¹⁰ Academic studies of credibility treat it as a "multidimensional" concept including at least believability, accuracy, trustworthiness, bias and completeness.¹¹ Some amplify the list to include sensationalism and a half-dozen additional items.¹²

Add it up, and the surveys probably DON'T mean readers think their paper will misreport the results of the Super Bowl. But looking at the picture over all, there is a one-two-three punch of bad news for newspapers:

• Newspapers continue to lag behind television as a believable source and are not closing the gap.

• Newspapers now seem to have lost readers in what used to be their strong point - offering after-the-fact analysis in times when news events have slowed down.
• Credibility is on a steady downward track, with online enthusiasts rating the Internet a more credible news source than either newspapers or TV.