Make your reporting more transparent
Help improve trust in the media
Hi, reporters! I recently got back from IRE 2022 and have a few new cool things to share.
First off, the team at Trusting News (which I really like) recommended using factboxes (also more funnily called “trust nuggets”) to increase reader trust in your work.
I used to be skeptical of this approach, because surely adding a little “why we did this” paragraph wasn’t going to help that much. But multiple studies have shown that these factboxes significantly increase an audience’s trust in you and your work. And with trust in the media currently way it is, we need all the help we can get. Sigh.
Unfortunately there is no one best tool for this (I asked), but most CMSes have a little factbox or callout icon you can drop in. Some outlets created a special option inside their CMS. If you really don’t have a factbox option, even just italicizing some text can help.
At IRE 2022, Trusting News pointed out that audiences are riding waves of misinformation, memes, misleading statistics and all sorts of stuff online. When they encounter a journalism story, even from a reputable outlet, they approach it with the same skepticism they would other content - which is not necessarily a bad thing!
After all, how often do you yourself see content on the Internet that is one-sided or misleading? Audiences aren’t wrong to be skeptical of the content they see online, so let’s help them out where we can!
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