When local journalism, advocacy, and politics collide

Newsrooms and journalists can’t ask readers to trust them while ignoring fundamental conflicts of interest.

Journalism has a trust problem. Blurring the lines between journalism, activism and politics only makes it worse.

At a time when public confidence in the news media is already dangerously low, local journalists and publishers should be doing everything possible to make those lines clearer. Instead, we increasingly see conflicts of interest that would once have raised serious ethical concerns treated as if they don’t matter.

We see reporters serving on political committees, publishers running for office in the same cities their outlets cover and editors being paid by advocacy organizations whose positions their newsrooms write about. Too often, these significant conflicts go undisclosed in stories, leaving readers without the information they need to evaluate the reporting.

These issues raise fundamental questions about independence, fairness and transparency, three principles at the heart of journalism.

Our allegiance as journalists should be to the facts. Our obligation is to be advocates for the truth.

That means following the facts even when they lead somewhere we did not expect and being fair to people we may personally dislike. It means giving someone a meaningful opportunity to respond to allegations and publishing information that may complicate a narrative or undermine our own assumptions. We should approach our work with an open mind, listen and verify what people tell us rather than simply repeating claims that support a narrative. And we must be willing to change course when the evidence demands it.

Fairness is fundamental to journalism, and it requires independence. Fairness does not mean giving every person the same number of paragraphs or treating truth and falsehood as equally valid.

Can a publisher fairly oversee coverage of a government while actively campaigning to become part of it? Can that publisher use a news organization’s online platforms to amplify a personal campaign while denying an opponent comparable coverage and still credibly claim the outlet is acting independently?

The answer is no.

If a reporter, editor or publisher is running for political office in a municipality their publication covers, the candidate should have no role in reporting on the race. But the problem goes deeper than who writes the stories. A news outlet cannot credibly claim to report independently and fairly on an election when the person who controls the outlet is one of the candidates.

The same principle applies to paid advocacy. If the publisher of a news outlet is paid by an advocacy organization that has taken a position on an issue, the publication should not cover that issue. Disclosure is something, but it is not enough. The conflict of interest is too fundamental.

Simply handing the story to another reporter does not solve the problem if the conflicted publisher or editor still decides what gets covered, how the story is framed or what ultimately gets published.

Other conflicts may be unavoidable. That’s where transparency becomes essential. Any conflict of interest should be disclosed in the story, where readers can see it as they evaluate the reporting.

The same clarity should apply to opinion and commentary. These pieces should be clearly labeled, and readers should not have to guess whether they are reading reported journalism or someone’s argument about an issue.

The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics calls on journalists to seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently and be accountable and transparent. The code specifically tells journalists to avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived, and to disclose unavoidable conflicts.

Those principles should not be treated as relics from another era. If anything, they matter more now, when the barriers to publishing have largely disappeared and the public is barraged with an endless stream of information from sources calling themselves news.

Activism is not a dirty word. Activists have exposed injustice, changed laws and forced powerful institutions to answer for harm. Advocacy organizations often conduct valuable research and bring important issues to the public’s attention. But advocacy, by its nature, has a goal: to advance a cause or position.

Journalism has a different obligation.

A journalist may begin reporting a story believing a government agency failed, only to discover the records tell a more complicated story. We may investigate a company expecting to uncover wrongdoing, only to find the evidence doesn’t support the allegation, or interview someone we strongly disagree with and discover that person is right about a particular fact or policy.

We have to tell readers what we found, even when it isn’t what we expected to find. And sometimes we have to walk away from a story when the facts don’t support our original hypothesis. That is the job.

The test of journalism is not how aggressively we pursue facts that support the story we expect to tell. The test comes when the facts lead somewhere else.

That commitment to independence should also guide how newsrooms handle conflicts of interest. We routinely tell readers when a foundation that funds our newsroom is mentioned in a story and disclose partnerships and relationships that could raise questions about our independence. Responsible journalists remove themselves from coverage when a personal or financial connection is too close.

When the conflict involves political power or paid advocacy, the standards should be even stricter.

This is especially important in local journalism.

Nationally, news is feeding polarization. Local news has largely avoided that fate, and surveys consistently show Americans trust local news more than national news.

We should not take that trust for granted. Blurring the lines between journalism, advocacy and politics risks squandering it.

Readers have to believe that when we publish something, we did so because the reporting supported it, not because it helped our campaign, pleased our employer or advanced one of our causes.

We will make mistakes. Every newsroom does. We should correct them clearly and promptly. We will make judgment calls readers disagree with, and we should be willing to explain them. Trust requires accuracy and accountability.

But there should be no confusion about who we serve. We don’t serve a political party, a candidate, an advocacy organization or a predetermined narrative.

We serve the public. Our job is to seek facts, verify them and tell the truth as fully and fairly as we can.

If we want readers to trust us, we have to earn that trust.