contentious.com

(NOTE: This is part 3 in a series. You may want to start from the beginning.)

Who can you trust? What should you believe? These are core questions for any news audience, in any media.

When trying to understand what’s happening, or to make meaning out of current events or trends, it’s important to decide how much you should trust or believe particular sources of news, commentary, and analysis. Thus, credibility is key to news reporting and discussion.

But what is credibility, really?…

Dictionary.com defines credibility simply as: “the quality of being believable or trustworthy” or “the quality, capability, or power to elicit belief.” Also, regarding an audience, credibility is: “a capacity for belief.”

Notice that these definitions do not address which characteristics make information or sources believable or trustworthy. This is because what you believe or trust is ultimately your choice. Credibility is a highly individual matter. It’s something you make up your own mind about (consciously or not) – or else you choose to allow others to make that decision for you (consciously or not). Either way, it’s your personal choice.

THE VALUE OF TRADITIONAL JOURNALISM

Any organization or individual that seeks primarily to publish news, commentary, or analysis – whether it’s the network news or a simple weblog – is dead in the water if it cannot establish credibility with its target audience.

Most practices of traditional journalism (fact-checking, corroboration, attribution, disclosure, balance, etc.) are intended to establish credibility through objective substantiation. That is, they aim to provide uniform, fact-based standards of proof, separated from subjective opinion, so that the audience can rest assured that any news provided from that venue has passed certain “sniff tests.”

This is why traditional journalism is so useful – and so valued by audiences. Traditional journalism fills a genuine need in our society. We don’t all have the time, expertise, or resources to adequately investigate or fact-check all the news that might concern or affect us. The constraints of everyday life require us to find information sources we can trust to a reasonable extent.

However, every mainstream news organization delivers far more than simply traditional journalism – editorials, op-eds, columnists, endorsements of political candidates, special advertising sections, “lifestyle” pieces, interviews, advice, how-tos, storytelling, and much more.

While they tout “hard news,” the bottom line is that these organizations recognize that their audiences and advertisers desire (in fact, need) many different kinds of content. That’s not merely a side effect of the publishing business model. It reflects the nature of the human mind, and of human society.

We need more than just facts to make meaning of our world. We engage with our world on a variety levels, and so we need lots of different kinds of information.

WHAT “TRANSPARENCY” MEANS ONLINE

It seems to me that, in general, the best weblogs have a different emphasis for establishing credibility: transparency.

Dictionary.com defines transparency as: “The full, accurate, and timely disclosure of information.” To that I would add, “and of relevant context, including biases, opinions, experience, goals, interests, and involvement.”

In publishing practice, this generally means acknowledging your own interests and biases (we all have them, it’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise), and those of the sources you cite. It’s important to do that right up front, not to bury it in the story. This sets crucial context. It helps the audience to apply their own internal filters.

The online world adds these new dimensions to establishing credibility through transparency:

• Direct links. Bloggers generally link to their sources whenever possible. This practice helps establish credibility by implying that audiences don’t have to blindly trust the blogger. They can check out sources directly and thus judge for themselves how effectively the blogger has portrayed and positioned that information. Has a blogger leapt to conclusions? Misrepresented facts? Links usually allow you to figure that out quickly.
• Comments. Most weblogs allow comments. This establishes a public discussion, allowing questions or other perspectives to be presented in the context of a particular story (or blog posting). The point here is establishing credibility by not trying to control the flow of information. Readers are free to raise questions, point out possible errors, provide additional context, etc. Often a blog-comment discussion allows bloggers to further disclose how they gather information and decide what to write. It also allows bloggers to publicly evolve their opinions, to disclose their own learning process. This makes bloggers more credible, I think, because it highlights their humanity. The objectivity of traditional journalism may be a lofty goal, but it’s definitely at odds with human experience and therefore undermines its own credibility after a point.
• Cross-blog conversations. Bloggers regularly comment on, elaborate upon, and critique each other’s work. These postings become woven into fairly coherent ongoing conversations through direct links and trackbacks – and also services such as Blogdex, del.icio.us or Technorati. This creates a rich fabric of context, as well as mutual and direct reality-checking. Weblogs tend to draw strength and credibility from interconnections. They don’t see other bloggers as “competition.” In contrast, news stories are generally more isolated because traditional news organizations have more competitive concerns.

CREDIBILITY IS EVOLVING

Credibility has always been a moving target. So where’s it heading today?

It seems to me that, as far as news and analysis of current events and trends is concerned, public discourse is becoming the hallmark of credibility. Audiences are increasingly impressed by venues that offer transparency through participation. They may or may not read blog comments, but they like the idea that anyone can comment. They may or may not follow links, but they like having that option. Today, public communication that is one-way or highly controlled appears ever more presumptuous, pompous, and incredible.

Traditional news organizations often give lip service to the value of transparency. In practice they generally prefer to present themselves as omniscient, objective, and authoritative – a surprisingly opaque and highly artificial (incredible) stance.

For instance, most traditional news organizations publish only the finished results of their reporting and editorial processes. Even when publishing online, they often avoid or minimize direct links to sources. Questions or disagreements generally may be raised only via private communications with reporters and editors, and these discussions generally become public only at the news venue’s discretion (via “letters to the editor”).

Thanks to the internet, news audiences now enjoy a much broader choice of information sources. Nearly every news organization on the planet now publishes online to some extent, as does nearly every “newsmaker” organization. And, of course, public discourse is thriving via weblogs, e-mail lists, and discussion forums.

Within that context, the authoritarian, competitive demeanor of many mainstream news organizations is starting to look silly – if not downright destructive.

RESTING ON LAURELS IS A STUPID STRATEGY

Credibility is all that any nonfiction publisher has to offer. Furthermore, credibility must be constantly established. You don’t get to earn it once and then rest on those laurels forever.

Bloggers understand this because they are constantly challenged – in comments to their own weblogs, and in other weblogs. Bloggers cannot ignore the public conversation without undermining their credibility and losing their audience.

In contrast, I think too many traditional news organizations have swallowed too much of their own hype. They mistake the goal of objectivity for reality, and disguise their own inevitable subjectivity. They reject transparency by trying to control information and elude or ignore direct public challenges. And they disdain publishers who do not share their goals or practices.

I don’t think this has been a conscious choice. Indeed, journalists who are asked to consider these issues closely often concede the artificiality of their style of work and communication. Although the goal of objectivity has useful purposes (again, substantiation IS important), it is only a means to an end.

The highest goal of news, analysis, and commentary is to help people make meaning – to understand what’s happening around them so they can make better choices in navigating their world.

Many bloggers share this goal. In this sense, bloggers and journalists are not at odds. They have much to learn from each other, and they can grow together for their own benefit and the greater public good.

NEXT: What bloggers and journalists can learn from each other

INDEX AND INTRO to this series