Joomla Login LightBox powered by WowJoomla.com

Some Smithville residents’ reactions to the city’s snow removal made me realize: Maybe we journalists don’t always do a good job of making our own policies known.

My realization came following a Smithville R-II School District Board of Education meeting. While talking about possible cuts in the school district’s state aid, a board member compared the district’s need to spread the word about potential school cuts to the city’s need to make its snow removal policy known.

Amid all the snow that fell during the holiday season, many people were upset when the city plowed other streets before their own. The city explained that it was following the street priority system outlined in its snow removal policy. Problem was, many people weren’t aware of this policy.

The commonality between snow removal and education cuts was the need to align expectation with reality, something that effective communication can often accomplish.

So perhaps we journalists should follow suit and do a better job of making our own policies known.

I usually assume that people know the basics of my industry, and I can get irritated when people don’t understand. But unlike me, most people haven’t carried around a reporter’s notebook for a third of their lives.

As a result, there’s often a gap between what people think we journalists do and what we actually do. So I probably should work to bridge that gap.

Really, a lot of community misconceptions about what we journalists do would go away if we could get across one thing: Everything we do is centered on what’s best for our readers. Not what’s best for our sources (the people we quote in stories) or those who advertise in our publications. Our main job is to tell readers what they want to know and what they need to know, and we aim to do it in the most unbiased way possible.

Some misconceptions arise more often than others. At least every few months or so, and lately it’s been more often than that, someone will ask if he can receive story preference because he advertises with us. No way, according to journalism ethics.

I definitely understand the thought behind the request. When you give your money to someone, you expect things in return. But when it comes to newspaper advertising, that return doesn’t extend into news content.

I think a good comparison can be found in politics. Do you want your elected officials making decisions based on what their donors want? Of course not. Their job is to represent the interests of the people they serve — the people who elected them, not the people who line their pockets.

Similarly, we journalists have to base our decisions on news value. In order to do that fairly, we can’t be influenced by money or anything else.

The advertising example is just one of several reoccurring misconceptions I see. I plan to use this space to explain other things we do — how we decide what to report, why we don’t let sources review stories prior to publication and other topics — in the future. Let me know if you have suggestions for topics you’d like me to address.

Because we journalists can’t expect people to know things we don’t tell them.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed