We’re announcing a new opportunity for journalists to confront news avoidance this spring working alongside a cohort of newsrooms
Research
What are the impacts of newsroom training to reimagine political coverage?
News research into a joint effort from Trusting News, Hearken, Solutions Journalism shows progress with newsroom’s election coverage
How to create an FAQ about your reporting
Answering questions and building public trust at the same time
Workshop helps journalists celebrate and understand their differences
Journalists, we have to stop assuming people understand the mission, ethics and processes behind our work. We can’t let ourselves get lumped in with perceptions of “the media.” Instead, we need to actively work to ear
Build trust by being real, right, objective and part of your community
When it comes to trust, local news organizations have been the bright spot for the journalism community as years of research and polling continue to show people trust in local news content more than national. For many people working in local news, that trend brings comfort, hope and sometimes makes the issue of building trust seem not […]
Make your reporting less polarizing with this Trusting News guide
We’ve worked with partner newsrooms to create and refine a tool for journalists — a checklist designed to make room in the editing process for journalists to be intentional about:
Research insights: What we learned testing an anti-polarization checklist with news consumers
If newsrooms can avoid polarizing writing and editing choices, they may be able to retain and attract more readers from the full political spectrum. That’s the thinking behind a resource Trusting News has been testing and refining.
Advice from journalists: Why and how we’re depolarizing our news
At Trusting News we wanted to see how journalists would feel after committing to using a depolarizing lens with some of their coverage for two months. Here’s what we learned: At Trusting News we rely on newsroom partners as we craft advice for journalists who want to build trust with the people they aim to […]
Here’s what people with low trust in news learned attending a morning TV news meeting
Research with WCPO helped unlock insights into how TV news stations could rebuild trust with their audience by having them attend a morning TV news meeting.
What PolitiFact learned about making money and earning trust
When journalists practice transparency around their processes, their goals and their values, news consumers tend to respond positively. Sometimes, they even spend more money on journalism. That’s the case with an experiment we ran this summer with PolitiFact. We divided the audience of their weekly email newsletter into segments to test two things: In both […]
What does “fairness” in news stories actually look like?
News consumers often say they want stories that “just give me the facts” and “include both sides.” When asked what they’re looking for in responsible journalism, at the very top of the list for news consumers will be one word: balance. (At least, it’s at the top of the list from 81 user interviews conducted by Trusting […]
Polarizing, oversimplified reporting causes mistrust. Let’s work on that.
Journalists’ use of catch-all phrases, generalized descriptions and labels can make people feel oversimplified and placed into one-size-fits-all categories. This can be true for organizations people belong to, for religious groups, for different opinions, for causes people support, for racial groups, for age groups, for ethnic groups, etc. Rather than painting complex, nuanced pictures of […]
New research shows how journalists can connect with conservatives and right-leaning audiences
At Trusting News, rather than accepting distrust in journalism, we work to better understand it so we can help journalists actively earn trust. We believe healthy democracies depend on civic dialogue and a shared set of facts. We also believe local news can play an especially important role in bridging conversations across political divides. With […]
Journalists, hold yourself accountable for earning the trust of BIPOC communities. This rubric will help.
In our work with newsrooms, there are ideas we recommend that are almost universally applicable when it comes to demonstrating credibility and earning trust with a community. They include doing a better job explaining journalism ethics, a newsroom’s mission, funding, the reporting process and our integrity. At Trusting News we train journalists on transparency and […]
Here’s what a newsroom survey reveals about the public’s confusion, frustration and trust
How one newsroom’s audience survey revealed public misunderstandings, frustrations, and curiosity about the newspaper.
‘More complete and relatable:’ What research finds about how a TV newsroom can earn trust on air
Research by Trusting News and the Center for Media Engagement found that TV newsrooms can build trust with their audiences by explaining why a story is covered.
“Explain your process” box improves perceptions of news organization
A new study from the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin found adding a box explaining your story process can improve a user’s perceptions of a news organization. The research was done on behalf of Trusting News and completed this month. The goal of the testing was to see whether adding explanations […]
