Rocky Mountain PBS and the Midwest Newsroom have partnered with the Trust Project, a consortium of news organizations that adopt shared standards for transparency, accuracy and ethics in journalism.
Participation in the project spans the globe, encompassing legacy news organizations and digital startups. U.S. partners include the Denver Post, Dallas Free Press, Colorado Sun, Newsweek and Buffalo’s Fire, an independent newsroom reporting on Native American news. Frontline, BBC World Service and CBC News are among the public service broadcasters that have joined the project.
The Trust Project’s goal is to amplify transparency, accuracy, inclusion and fairness in journalism so that news consumers can identify trustworthy news.
The project started when founder and chief executive Sally Lehrman began exploring how technology could help restore trust and integrity in news coverage, according to the project’s website.
Funders include the Trustworthy Journalism Initiative of Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Google, Democracy Fund, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Facebook.
News organizations align their editorial practices with eight “Trust Indicators” that are meant to signify reliable and ethical journalism: “Best Practices,” “Journalist Expertise,” “Labels,” “References,” “Methods,” “Locally Sourced,” “Diverse Voices” and “Actionable Feedback.” They publish extensive details about their editorial practices, detailed staff biographies and explanations of the reporting and research that went into a story.
Digital platforms such as Google and Facebook also use the indicators in their systems, according to Lehrman. For example, Facebook uses the indicators in its news registration process.
‘Trust us and share our stories’
Midwest Newsroom, the regional collaborative of four stations and NPR, started implementing the indicators last fall, according to Holly Edgell, managing editor.
“I hope it means that people will come to us for interesting stories and trust us and share our stories with others because they think the work is trustworthy,” she said.
The Midwest Newsroom is a partnership that produces in-depth and investigative journalism with participation from NPR, Iowa Public Radio, Nebraska Public Media News, St. Louis Public Radio and KCUR in Kansas City, Mo.
When the regional newsroom launched in 2021, Edgell wanted to demonstrate a commitment to gaining and earning trust “right off the bat.”
“It was very important to find a way to demonstrate our commitment through transparency and really doing the work behind those [Trust Project Trust] Indicators to examine ourselves and figure out who we are, what do we stand for,” Edgell said.
Edgell also knew Lehrman, who previously worked as a journalist specializing in science and medical coverage. Lehrman began building the Trust Project in 2014.
The Trust Indicators were created through interviews with members of the public and meetings with news executives, Lehrman said.
Edgell decided the Trust Project was a good fit after she learned about the eight Trust Indicators and researched the other partners, she said. “I didn’t really consider any other organization.”
RMPBS, which operates a network of PBS stations and Denver-based public radio music stations KUVO and The Drop, began changing its approach to news in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. The daily news operation shifted from “magazine-style broadcast journalism to more responsive digital content,” said News Editor Kyle Cooke. RMPBS employs a total of 15 journalists.
The news team was familiar with the Trust Project because the Colorado Sun, a nonprofit news outlet that operates out of RMPBS’ headquarters in Denver, is already a partner.
“Small papers across the state are closing, and private equity is buying up legacy brands and then gutting them,” Cooke said. “So not only do people have fewer options for local journalism, but the options are feeling less local in general.”
“We saw the Trust Project as a way to not only show our audience why they could trust us, but to also show them that our journalists are members of their community, too,” he added.
RMPBS began adding Trust Project features to its website in December, according to Cooke.
Websites for Rocky Mountain PBS and the Midwest Newsroom feature detailed pages on their ethics and journalism practices, descriptions of their funding, explanations of how to request corrections and breakdowns of staff diversity. Digital stories are labeled by category, such as news or opinion. Rocky Mountain PBS, for example, has a label for “Q&A” and announcements from its director of communication.
Technical issues with public stations’ content management systems have made it difficult to integrate the Trust Project’s indicators on their websites, Lehrman said. But now there is a workaround.
For example, labels at the top of the Colorado Sun’s news stories are interactive and allow readers to learn about the story category with a single click. On Midwest Newsroom stories, labels appear above the headline, but readers have to scroll to the bottom of the piece for more details. Lehrman hopes to add more interactivity to public media news sites within the next year.
Implementing the indicators
Each applicant to the Trust Project undergoes a review to ensure that they are truly an independent news organization, that they report in the public interest and produce a significant amount of news, Lehrman told Current.
The organizations learn about the eight indicators and then begin working with a Trust Project coach, she added. The coaches help the newsrooms implement the indicators by working with them on policies, for example, or by explaining what other organizations have done.
Lehrman said she is excited about public media newsrooms joining the project. They often lead the way in journalism practices such as public engagement.
But public media also finds itself in a position where assumptions of trust in its journalism have been weakening, she added.
“Right now, with questions being raised about public media, it’s extremely important for news organizations to lay out their standards clearly and demonstrate their integrity,” Lehrman said.
At RMPBS, the easy part of the implementation work was writing the policies that were “kind of just verbal agreements among our team members,” Cooke said.
The most labor-intensive part was creating new editorial policies on uses of unnamed sources and how to post corrections.
In addition to guidance and recommendations from the project, RMPBS “relied on national partners at NPR and PBS for inspiration,” Cooke said. “But … the journalism leadership team had to make the final decision on these things.”
RMPBS can’t take the trust viewers have in the national PBS brand for granted, he added.
“It’s also important for local newsrooms like ours here at Rocky Mountain PBS to show why our audience in Colorado can trust not only the national PBS, but the local PBS, and to be able to make that distinction more clear,” Cooke said.