News Know-How

Good news organizations should be open about their editorial and publication staffs. Management & editorial staff listings (called the "masthead") are printed in every print edition of most newspapers. Good web publications are also transparent. To find out who is publishing a news outlet, go to the About page or search in Google. Reputable news organizations should make available:

• Open acknowledgement of funding and ownership (masthead)
• A list of top-level editors
• A Public Editor or Reader Representative - someone who takes responsibility for journalism ethics & responding to readers (sometimes called an "ombudsman" or "ombudsperson.")
• Evidence of a process for making corrections and retractions
• A statement of journalistic ethics

News organizations should:

1. be independent,
2. be accountable, and
3. work hard to verify facts.

If any one of these three elements is missing, it's simply not journalism. It's something else: advertising, propaganda, entertainment, or just raw information. See this handout (google doc) by the Center for News Literacy for more information.

There is no such thing as "bias free" news. Reporters attempt to be as objective as possible, but bias creeps in: we're humans, not automatons.

News sources can reduce bias by posting and abiding by codes of ethics. These often include statements about:

• Conflicts of interest
• Error correction
• Attribution of sources
• Plagiarism and credit
• Fairness

For instance, instead of making a bland statement about objectivity, the Washington Post provides these guidelines for fairness:

No story is fair if it omits facts of major importance or significance. Fairness includes completeness.

No story is fair if it includes essentially irrelevant information at the expense of significant facts. Fairness includes relevance.

No story is fair if it consciously or unconsciously misleads or even deceives the reader. Fairness includes honesty – leveling with the reader.

No story is fair if reporters hide their biases or emotions behind such subtly pejorative words as “refused,” “despite,” “quietly,” “admit” and “massive.” Fairness requires straightforwardness ahead of flashiness.

One way to account for bias is to make sure you read articles from a broad spectrum of sources.

Verifying science news is a special case, because you can often go straight to the source: science news articles often link directly to the original scholarly publication on which the story is based. Problem: many science articles are behind paywalls. Solution: Two new tools come to the rescue by directing you to Open Access (OA) versions of articles available elsewhere: