Enhancing the Integrity of Electronic News   

It's not that the news staff at WSFA-TV avoids thinking about ethics. All 39 staff members at the Montgomery, Alabama, NBC affiliate have a recently revised manual on station policy, and the newsroom is often filled with lively discussion on the latest "should we cover it?" dilemma.

But at a time when top media organizations from CNN to the Boston Globe have been hit with high-profile credibility questions, internal debate and shelved ethics manuals may not be enough in the local trenches.

With six newscasts to fill every day, finding a way to formally discuss ethics is daunting. "We don't make enough time in our newsrooms just to talk," says Lucy Himstedt, WSFA news director and chairperson of the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation.

"We're looking for some help," she says. "It's a 'where do you start?' sort of thing."

RTNDF hopes local news operations start by turning to it. The education arm of the Radio-Television News Directors Association recently launched a three-year project to "enhance the integrity and credibility of the electronic news media."

Funded by a $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, RTNDF's News Judgment and Ethics project includes a pair of national surveys on local electronic media credibility and a series of training seminars focusing on small local media outlets.

"We've had examples of news organizations making mistakes and recanting," says RTNDA President Barbara Cochran. "One of the most important things we can do...is launch a serious discussion."

For years, RTNDF has teamed with the Poynter Institute for Media Studies to offer "Tough Calls," seminars for broadcasters on making deadline decisions. But the recent spate of media flubs boosted the effort to find solutions, Cochran says.

The new project--run by RTNDF's Kathleen Graham--began with a national survey on the public's perception and news directors' opinions of local television news. About 1,000 members of the general public and 300 news directors participated.

Once the survey sets up the benchmark, RTNDF plans to:

• Hold nine regional forums throughout the country on journalism integrity this year and nine more in 2000. The two-day training sessions, slated to begin March 5 in Baltimore, will include journalists and members of the public. Organizers plan to target journalists who don't usually have access to training and to involve the public in talks about ethics and media.

• Develop an ethics training curriculum, including a videotape for staff ethics meetings.

• Meet regularly with a national advisory council made up of local radio and television news directors, network executives and media ethics experts.

• Launch a second national survey in three years to see if the perception of the media has changed.

An important aspect of the project, says Cochran, is letting the public know broadcasters do have standards. "We have historically done a very poor job of explaining ourselves to the public," she says.

With the explosion of 24-hour cable news, the number of television news channels is increasing. Local news operations are struggling to stay relevant, says Brian Trauring, news director at WATE-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee, and a member of RTNDF's new ethics advisory council.

"You're getting more entertainment. You're getting more pressure for ratings," says Trauring. "As that happens, the pressure increases for higher profits."

Many young reporters starting out in local news have little, if any, formal training in news judgment or decision-making, says Trauring. Newsrooms need a way to open the dialogue.

But TV critic Howard Rosenberg says spending $200,000 on improving ethics and news judgment misses the point. Journalists shouldn't have to be taught how to judge what news is.

"It's so obvious what's right and wrong," says Rosenberg, a television columnist at the Los Angeles Times who has also taught journalism ethics at the University of Southern California. The competition for ratings has helped bring local television news to its lowest ebb, he says.

But local television news' reputation as the worst of the worst may be undeserved, Cochran says. She cites several credibility studies that show, in the public's eyes, local television news is no worse than any other part of the media. "I believe that discussion comes largely from print reporters," she says.

Unlike print outlets, most TV news broadcasts have no letters to the editor or similar forums for the public to respond to content. That might be part of the ethics solution, says Himstedt, who is leaving WSFA in January to become vice president and general manager of WFIE-TV in Evansville, Indiana.

For the broadcast journalists who can't take part in RTNDF's project, at least the idea is out there, and people are talking about ethics, says WATE's Trauring.

"You can start this process yourself. Don't sensationalize. Be accurate. Be fair," he says. "I have high hopes."