Startup media watchdog downplays bite

Black and white

November 30, 2006 10:07:50 AM

A group of New England journalists, academics, and media critics have founded a new regional organization, the New England News Forum, to support the integrity of area news outlets in an age of increased public distrust of the media. But the prospect of the forum holding public hearings on ethical complaints has some journalists concerned.

The forum will be one of the country’s latest news councils. News councils are independent organizations, often made up of members of the media, known best for holding public hearings in which journalists are called to explain themselves against ethical complaints made by members of the public. While libel is often difficult to prove in court, news councils require far less evidence to slap the wrists of reporters and editors who may have sensationalized their reporting or otherwise offended a news source. Councils’ sanctions are voluntary and sometimes include fines, and complainants waive their right to sue.

Because of a history of controversy surrounding the hearings, NENF’s executive director Bill Densmore says they will likely play a small part in the New England News Forum, if they happen at all. Much of the forum’s focus instead will be on creating a dialogue between New England journalists and the public about journalistic ethics, supporting media bloggers, and running a Web site indexing and discussing regional news.

“We will be able to accomplish 90 percent of what we want to do without the complaint process,” Densmore says.

But complaint hearings remain a possibility for the news forum when it officially launches in early 2007, especially since one of the advisors to the NENF, outgoing director of the Minnesota News Council Gary Gilson, has participated in dozens of hearings over his fourteen years on the Minnesota council and defends their merit. Proponents of news councils and the hearings they are based on, including media giants Bill Moyers and Mike Wallace, believe public reckonings encourage quality journalism and illuminate the way journalists work. But opponents, including executives at the New York Times Company (owner of the Boston Globe) and the Phoenix Media/Communications Group (parent company of the Portland Phoenix) believe such hearings hamper freedom of the press.

Jane Kirtley, an expert on media law at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and former executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, is a vocal opponent of news council hearings, calling them “kangaroo courts.” She says the Minnesota News Council under Gilson has "tried" media outlets in absentia, found a newspaper guilty of bias in an editorial, and in general allowed public figures to denigrate journalists who are tough on them.

“The problem I see is that it gives credibility to these government officials when they’re making complaints about journalists doing what journalists do, which is criticize them,” she says.

Some local journos are concerned, but most who attended NENF’s two informational meetings on the University of Southern Maine campus last week are withholding judgement until the forum is launched. Only eight members of the Maine media attended the private morning meeting designed for local newspeople. More than a dozen more attended the public meeting later that evening. No one from the Portland Press Herald, Maine’s largest newspaper, attended and a call to Jeannine Guttman, editor and vice president of the paper, was not returned. Jeff Inglis, managing editor of the Portland Phoenix, attended the morning meeting, and had invited other media members as part of his involvement with the Maine chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, which helped organize the NENF meetings.

“I think it's important that there’s an effort made to give the public an opportunity to give feedback in the [journalistic] process,” says Jeff Wade, program and news director at WGAN radio. Wade attended the morning meeting. “I’d like to see more of the media organizations participate down the line.”

The New England News Forum received a $75,000 start-up grant in June from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The foundation also awarded start-up funds to a news council forming in southern California. News councils exist in Minnesota, Washington, and Hawaii and in several countries around the world.