Clickbait I


regulation remains a hit-and-miss affair. Journalists, meanwhile, are under relentless pressure to serve up 24-hour news and clickbait stories, often while negotiating the hazards of social media. But is there a way forward whereby public trust is regained?


Perhaps by changing the way journalists operate and approach stories? According to Hardeep Matharu, editor-in-chief of Byline Times, the strongest critics of today’s media include journalists themselves. “There are many individuals working in the profession who


have a sense that perhaps what they’re doing does not always equate to the high standards of journalism,” she says. At the heart of the problem, says Nick Davies (pictured


right), the former Guardian journalist who exposed the phone-hacking scandal, is a business model that largely depends on the internet and, is in some ways, is subservient to it. This makes it harder for journalists to get to and report hard facts, assuming that is their intention. “The real test is whether they are telling or at least trying to tell the truth,” says Davies, who retired from journalism in 2016. “Insofar as journalism fails that essential test, people are quite right to distrust it.” Most journalists, he says, are decent, honest people. Yet the


newsrooms they work in are starved of resources. “If they are not given the time to go out and find stories and check facts, they are likely sometimes to end up recycling all sorts of falsehoods, distortion and PR crap,” he adds. Media owners argue that they must meet the demands of online audiences to raise revenue. This can mean responding to the emotions and prejudices of those who frequent social media and are steered towards stories via online platforms. The relationship between journalists and social media makes it harder to build trust with wider audiences, says


08 | theJournalist


reputation “


Journalism is being undermined and trust lost. Neil Merrick looks at what can be done


t won’t come as a surprise to most journalists to discover that trust in the media is in short supply. More than a decade after the phone-


hacking scandal and Leveson inquiry, media


The test is whether journalists are telling the truth


Ali-Abbas Ali, director of media competition at Ofcom, which regulates broadcasting and online safety. “The environment in which people get their news means there is a strong financial incentive for the person running the [online] platform to provide more clickbait-type material,” he says. This puts ever-increasing pressure on journalists to show


they have more impact and influence than, say, social media influencers. “It’s important audiences understand there’s a difference in quality between what you do as journalists and the rest of the content out there,” adds Ali. Of course, it wasn’t always like this. In days gone by, a limited media – consisting largely of print newspapers and


Studying an ethical approach


For the past six months, about 30 journalists from across the UK have been studying how the media can be more ethical. The course in ethical


media and journalism, run by regulator Impress with the University of Huddersfield, began as a pilot last summer before its launch in October. Themes include navigating


bias, protecting personal data, ethical investigations, discrimination in community journalism and working with vulnerable people. Beth Parkes, education


manager at Impress, says the course is a response to poor


practice. “Certain newspapers and publishers have gained a reputation for being unethical and untrustworthy,” she says. “That’s what we are working to change,” she says. Most of the course is


online, although participants met in person last June and via Teams in September. Should a publisher want a


group of journalists to take the course, a cohort could be taken through the nine modules together and perhaps taught face to face. Parkes stresses that not all


journalists are unethical, and are sometimes unhappy


about how their stories are presented, perhaps after being rewritten. “A lot of journalists are


passionate about being trusted and improving the industry,” she adds. This makes studying


issues such as attribution, copyright, disinformation and misinformation important. “We talk about the benefits


of respecting privacy and what good investigative journalism looks like,” she says. “It’s about respecting communities, especially marginalised communities we’re not necessarily directly involved with.”


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