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Index | Editorial | Birds-eye view | Opening the toolbox toolbox| Zoom-in on the newsroom | Media landscapes 0 it’s transparency, stupid! Journalism is increasingly faced with calls for more public accountability. Empowerment of citizens, digitalisation, commercialisation and increasing information flows pose new demands for journalistic quality and professional legitimacy. Consequently, professional organisations increasingly state the importance of being transparent and responsive towards the audience. While both audience interaction and transparency are indispensable in their own right, we suggest that transparency deserves extra attention. Not only is transparency believed to improve news media credibility, it also supports audience interaction and, not insignificantly, it is relatively easy to realise. Serveral ways of transparency Journalists and newsrooms can be transparent in several ways. In the first place, journalists can be clear about their sources. Referring to sources is a common journalistic practice; by attributing assertions to others, a journalist explains how their claims are underpinned. Increasingly, this ‘source transparency’ is provided by links to original documents and raw material. It is less common, however, to explain the authority, the expertise and the interests of a source. Few journalists mention the specific conditions of news people before appearing as a source. In the second place, journalists can be transparent by sharing thoughts and decisions during the journalistic process. Some call this ‘process journalism’, to emphasise By huuB eVerS & hArMen grOenhArT Photograph: photocase/MMchen To what extent and how should journalists engage in audience participation? that journalistic claims are never definitive, but constantly developing. Admitting and correcting mistakes is part of the same deal. Third, journalists can be transparent about themselves and their organisations by means of mission statements, ethical standards, responsibilities and backgrounds. A common practice is the use of credit lines or the publication of short journalists’ biographies on the news medium’s website. Apart from this, many journalists create their own individual profile. They have their own website, or use Twitter to express their thoughts or to ask followers for help. This makes it easier for potential sources to find a journalist when they want to provide them with information. In addition, many journalists perceive transparency in terms of the accessibility of the news organisation by means of a contact for complaints. Publication of any form of audience interaction, like user comments, social media, or participatory journalism may be called ‘interaction transparency’, which symbolises the responsiveness of journalists. Nevertheless, journalists have good reasons for secrecy as well. As journalism is a discipline of verification, it is hazardous to publish news that still needs to be checked. Unless journalists have doubtful motives, they do not want to publish obvious inaccuracies. More strategically, journalists may need to keep their projects secret from their object of inquiry or from competing news media. The most fundamental reason for secrecy, however, lies in source protection. Absolute transparency silences criticism, and as such it functions
against freedom of information. Therefore, journalistic transparency may be wise, but should be handled with great care. Do you practice what you preach? Notwithstanding these important considerations, newsrooms do not seem to practice what they preach about transparency and audience interaction. The <strong>MediaAcT</strong> research shows a clear difference between what journalists think their newsroom should do and what they think their newsroom actually does. Considerable parts of the journalistic process do not require secrecy, so something else is going on. Part of the explanation, as we found, lies in a tendency to shift the responsibility for transparency and audience interaction to others. As may be the case in any other organisation or profession, journalists seem to believe particularly that their colleagues need to make more effort. For instance, journalists working for the dailies do not attach the highest values to employing an ombudsman, the news agency journalists do. This is remarkable because ombudsmen have no traditional role for news agencies. Because we do not expect news agencies to hire ombudsmen in the near future themselves, we suggest that these results show a ‘telling others what to do-effect’: news agency journalists – possibly evaluating themselves as a gateway to the news media – consider that it is a good idea if their print colleagues employ an ombudsman or public editor. Telling others what to do also comes to the fore between job positions. Journalists with managerial job positions differ from operational journalists in their attitudes towards transparency and audience interaction. Editors-in-chief attached the highest values and freelancers the lowest values to providing a contact for complaints about content. Although all respondents were rather positive about employing an ombudsman, editors-in-chief are more positive than reporters. In addition, compared to media managers, both reporters and freelancers seem to shy away from audience interaction. This may be due to assumptions about accountable organisations, which is more the editor-in-chief’s problem, and the seemingly unfeasible interference with journalistic production, which is more the reporter’s problem. In the end, reporters have to deal with the audience on a daily basis, not the editors-in-chief, who merely deal with end-ofthe-line audience interaction. Also, age groups account for a few, but meaningful differences. Junior journalists appreciate direct communication on social media and online participatory news production significantly more than senior journalists. This does not mean that senior journalists attach no value to audience ties in general. Senior journalists show no significant differences on the importance of responding to users’ comments and suggestions, and moreover, senior journalists appreciate the more traditional means of communication, like a central contact for complaints or an ombudsman. Finally, the journalists’ nationalities also seem to matter. Although it seems that European journalists share a common belief that transparency and audience interaction is important, we found significant differences between different countries. For instance, Jordanian journalists show high belief in citizens’ contributions to journalism. Contrasting with journalists from other countries, they strongly believe in co-production and in direct communication via social media. Moreover, Jordanian and Tunisian journalists estimate that their audiences’ interest in media accountability issues is high. The Arab spring may offer an explanation for this, as very recently the citizen’s voice had significant impact on governmental regimes in these countries. Regarding ombudsmen – as a way to offer transparent communication with the reader – we found interesting differences as well. On the one hand, French and Spanish journalists clearly attach most value to employing an ombudsman. This may be related to the relatively long tradition of having ombudsmen, who are seen as icons of quality journalism for prestigious news media, such as Le Monde, El País and several broadcasting organisations. On the other hand, Finland and Estonia have no tradition of ombudsmen, which clearly resonates in the low support given to this by both Finnish and Estonian journalists. Moreover, in the case of Finland, this low score emphasises that journalists seem quite satisfied with the existing culture of audience interaction. In summary, we found significant differences between how groups of journalists perceive the importance and actual practices of transparency and audience interaction. Managers think journalists should interact more with the audience, while journalists think managers should invest more in organisational transparency. Although, to a certain extent, European journalists share a common ideology on transparency and interaction with the audience, the historical and political context of individual countries also clearly affects journalists’ faith in transparency and audience interaction. This suggests that, if feasible, any journalistic quality management should be defined at the national level and only in terms of improving self-regulation. The profession itself knows best what improves quality in the newsroom and what does not. Transparency and audience interaction seem to be promising tools in that respect, as there still seems to be considerable room for improvement. And what about the audience itself? Journalists often reject pleas for transparency claiming that the general public is not interested in the processes behind the scenes. This seems to be only partly true. On the one hand, Dutch research, by Schönbach and Van der Wurff, showed that the audience is not very keen to get in touch with journalists. The interactive character of public accountability suggests a certain amount of reciprocity which is certainly not the case for all news consumers. Usually the accountability process only gets going where mistakes have been made or in cases of public indignation. Factors further hampering the process are the weak media literacy of the public and the poor transparency and accessibility of news organisations. On the other hand, other recent research by Groenhart in the Netherlands contradicts the supposition of disinterest among news users. A group of news users is intrinsically interested in newsroom processes, and many like to observe what’s going on in the newsrooms more passively. When it comes to quality management, the audience expects a certain level of transparency in journalism. This high or low level of interest does not depend so much on a certain medium type or age group, but rather on media literacy. Therefore, proactive transparency and media literacy may have more potential for public accountability than passively waiting for the audience to correct journalism quality. The <strong>MediaAcT</strong> project has therefore developed an online platform for citizens and bloggers, aiming to increase media literacy (see page 22-23). Instead of expecting the public to proactively engage with the news process, journalists should make the effort of making their trade more transparent. They should do so by stating the professional intentions of news media, by revealing the struggles behind the scenes, and above all by showing off their own successful efforts. 1 Index | Editorial | Birds-eye view | Opening the toolbox toolbox| Zoom-in on the newsroom | Media landscapes
Page 1 and 2: MediaAcT Final Research Report How
Page 3 and 4: ZOOM-In On ThE nEwsrOOM 24 CRiTiCAl
Page 5 and 6: A right royal tussle between press
Page 7 and 8: Leveson’s plan caused an instant
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Page 11 and 12: ple, in the Netherlands). In Jordan
Page 13 and 14: media? First, via a message, which
Page 15 and 16: Online OFFline Example 4: Productio
Page 17 and 18: OFFline Example 12: External Tools
Page 19: sources of information by attaching
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Page 25 and 26: Critical or hypocritical journalist
Page 27 and 28: the High-Level Group - even though
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Page 39 and 40: playing an active role in fighting
Page 41 and 42: ia? Self-regulation vs. co-regulati
Page 43 and 44: Boguslawa Dobek-Ostrowska, Poland W

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