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Newsrooms selected to participate in the project choose a story, area of coverage or quality issue that has prompted questions, complaints or misunderstanding from the public.
Editors then organize a community conversation that involves readers, stakeholders and staffers. The newspaper follows up by considering action to build strong journalism that deserves to be trusted, and is. 116 news organizations in 48 states have sponsored roundtables during the first two years of the project. They represent a range of circulation sizes and ownership groups. Local journalists and their readers have dealt with such topics as factual accuracy; bias in stories about controversial issues, including gun control and hog farm regulation; explicitness in photos and crime coverage; knowledge of minority communities; a publisher's influence on news about his business interests; addressing sensitive issues in religion and education. Follow-up actions have included more community conversations; publishing explanations about newspaper practices; putting more reader ideas on news agendas; shifting resources to cover neglected topics; training staff; instituting formal checks for accuracy, fairness and diversity. In 2003, in the wake of the Jayson Blair/New York Times incident, five newspapers that held previous Credibility Roundtables agreed to host "deadline" community conversations on media credibility in June and July. Each newspaper partnered with a community organization. Also in 2003, in addition to the core roundtables program, the project sponsored the Reader Interactive Program- an initiative that teaches local editors to use e-mail networks as another way for the public and journalists to stay in touch. Twenty-six newsrooms are taking part. Eighteen newsrooms have small programs up and running. Editors have used the e-mail feedback groups to get more, less predictable voices in news stories and for public comment on sensitive journalistic decisions. Web Site Corrections & Clarifications Policy: The APME National Credibility Roundtables Project strives to publish accurate information. If you think we have published something in error on this Web site, please e-mail us: credibility@ap.org. We will remove inaccurate information as soon as possible and post the corrections and clarifications we have made on this page. |