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The rational way to deal with citizen complaints to the news media is to look beyond the vitriol to find the constructive criticism. This requires keeping an open mind. “We’re too thin‐skinned,” said Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor of The Associated Press, speaking of the industry as a whole. “We should not take questioning by the public as an assault.”¹⁷

So it is useful to compile a list of what irritates the public the most. Like market research in the business world, the complaints can identify patterns that need attention.

In some cases, this exercise might suggest that, instead of changing their newsgathering techniques, journalists should do a better job of explaining themselves. In other words, they should be transparent. “We have not been good at explaining our methodology – the reasons why we do the things we do,” said James M. Naughton, former president of the Poynter Institute. “There is less fear of conspiracy if the newsgathering process is open.”¹⁸

The list below – based on anecdotal evidence as well as surveys – summarizes recurring themes in complaints from the news audience. The topics are discussed in more detail elsewhere in this textbook.

Bias: This is the most common complaint, and the complaints focus on stories about politics, a subject on which the audience is polarized. The survey by Gallup and the Knight Foundation showed in 2020 that an overwhelming majority of Americans detected political bias in the news: 49% saw “a great deal of bias” and 37% “a fair amount.”¹⁹ Bias exists in part because journalism is a subjective art. Its practitioners continually make decisions about the news – what stories to cover, what facts to use, what facts to highlight in the stories, and what stories to present most prominently. Each decision is an opportunity for opinions to seep in. Conscientious journalists adopt an attitude of professional detachment, blocking out their opinions and following where the facts lead.

Unnamed sources: News accounts are more authoritative when sources are identified. When journalists use anonymous sources, they are asking their audience – proved in the surveys to be skeptical – to trust their judgment that the sources know what they are talking about. Without the source’s name and position, the public has no way to assess the validity of the information or its possible bias. Thus the use of an anonymous source places a special burden on the reporter, because the news organization effectively is vouching for the accuracy of what is attributed to the source. Anonymity is legitimately granted to protect a whistleblower – someone with inside knowledge of wrongdoing who is willing to come forward but would be in jeopardy if identified. Protecting such a source enables journalists to give the public information that it otherwise would not receive.

Too many mistakes: The Gallup-Knight survey also showed that Americans were troubled by inaccuracies in reporting. In a horrifying verdict for the journalism profession, many news consumers suspected that those inaccuracies are intentional and an effort to promote an agenda. Though criticism like that is off the mark, journalists need to recognize the danger of making up their minds about a story before they finish their reporting. In her Point of View essay accompanying this chapter, Jane Shoemaker warns about approaching an assignment with preconceived notions or coaxing an interview subject to provide exactly the quotes the reporter is looking for. Also, it’s worth noting that news organizations get criticism not just for factual errors but for sloppiness in grammar and punctuation as well. The public is saying that if journalists can’t get the little things right, how can they be trusted on the larger issues?

Insensitivity: Although news consumers may be interested in how victims of tragedy are coping with their ordeals, they are disgusted when reporters, especially those on television, appear to trample on the victims’ feelings. Unlike public officials and business executives who are accustomed to media questioning, these ordinary citizens are thrust involuntarily into the news. They are vulnerable to exploitation and have a right to be left alone. In Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists, Robert J. Haiman quoted an editor as telling his staff: “The mayor, the police chief, the people who run the big companies in town … they deal with us all of the time and they are all big boys and girls who can take care of themselves. But let’s not treat somebody’s old Uncle Harry or Aunt Millie the same way we treat the pols and the pros.”²⁰

Sensationalism: The public thinks journalists chase stories about sex, scandal, and celebrities not because they are important but because they think they will attract a bigger audience. A classic example of the genre was the coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death in a Florida hotel‐casino on February 8, 2007. For two days, the cable networks devoted 50 percent of their news coverage to the saga of the Playboy centerfold model who had become a rich widow and then a star on reality TV.²¹ The Smith story was a media creation that dominated cable television for nearly a month, absorbing nearly one‐fourth of the available news time.²² The phenomenon illustrated by the Smith coverage is a blending of entertainment and information to yield “infotainment.” Infotainment has ethical implications for journalism, whose primary purpose is to give citizens the information they need to be free and self‐governing.²³ If lighter fare gets more of the news media’s resources, important civic topics get less.

Journalists’ ethics: As a journalism ethicist for the Poynter Institute, Kelly McBride is used to being gibed by nonjournalists who view her job description as a contradiction in terms. On an airliner, when a row neighbor finds out what she does for a living, the response is often: “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”²⁴ In contrast to the surveys that show little public respect for journalists’ ethics, a study of moral development by two professors showed that journalists are skilled at working through the ethical dimensions of problems in their profession. The professors, Lee Wilkins of the University of Missouri and Renita Coleman of Louisiana State University, reported that their study of 249 journalists placed them fourth among 20 groups that had taken the Defined Issues Test, designed to assess moral development.²⁵

Advertisers’ influence: As mentioned above, the dual nature of news websites, broadcast stations, and newspapers creates an unavoidable appearance of a conflict of interest. The media perform a quasi‐civic function of providing information to the public, but they cannot survive in the marketplace if they can’t pay their bills. So they sell advertisements to businesses that want their messages to reach the news organization’s audience. Even though advertising is declining (and digital subscriptions are increasing) as a source of revenue for news organizations, its mere presence makes it easy for a skeptical consumer to assume that the news organization will slant the news to cater to the wishes of an advertiser. This has happened, but journalists are zealous about guarding against such occurrences or blowing the whistle on them if they do occur. Time and again, news organizations have rebuffed advertisers’ pressure at great financial sacrifice.