Journalists and Media Accountability

Foreword

Scott R. Maier

Accountability and transparency: what journalists demand of their sources is also what the news media need to ask of themselves in order to maintain their independence and credibility. Identifying the best tools to achieve these goals has been MediaAcT’s mission, and in so doing, the research consortium helps to preserve a free and vibrant press.

Thus I felt honored when invited to serve on MediaAcT’s advisory board. But privately, I harbored doubts about what would be learned from this three-year study of media accountability and transparency across the European continent. In the United States, where I worked as a reporter and now teach journalism, traditional mechanisms of media accountability have become endangered species. For example, ombudsmen positions have been downgraded, if not eliminated, as newspapers struggle with reduced resources and personnel. Only one regional press council, isolated in the nation’s northwest corner, remains active in the United States. I quietly wondered, what value do these musty accountability instruments offer European media?

MediaAcT has demonstrated that media accountability and transparency indeed remain vital in theory and in practice. More than 30 press councils in Europe provide a voluntary platform for airing grievances about news coverage. Digital journalism—from media blogs to corrections buttons—provides new venues for media to explain how the story is covered—or misreported. The need for media accountability became strikingly clear as the News of the World scandal brought journalistic practices under sharp scrutiny in the United Kingdom. As this book’s introduction pronounces, “Media accountability is back on the political agenda.”

Perhaps MediaAcT’s greatest contribution is to provide a factual foundation to the debate on media self-regulation. Funded by the European Union, MediaAcT conducted a survey of 1,762 journalists in twelve European and two neighboring Arab states. In addition, the research consortium interviewed scores of journalists to better understand how media accountability is ← 1 | 2 → handled in each of the nations studied. With this information, MediaAcT fills a gap in mass communication research with thoughtful, empirical analysis of media accountability and transparency in Europe.

The challenges that MediaAcT encountered were at times formidable. Imagine designing a multinational survey on “media accountability”—a term that doesn’t even exist in some of the languages used. (To assure language equivalency, each survey was translated from English into the relevant languages and then back again into English.) In the UK, many British reporters and editors initially resisted participating in the MediaAcT project when the survey was distributed in the heat of the Leveson Inquiry over journalistic practices. In Tunisia, face-to-face interviews with journalists were conducted in place of online surveys to minimize the risk of surveillance by the national secret service.

Despite the hurdles, the MediaAcT team demonstrated resilience and a cheerful ‘can do’ attitude that ultimately made the project a success. The result is an empirically driven study that builds on existing theory and combines qualitative with quantitative analysis to offer fresh perspectives on journalism culture and practice.

The findings highlight the assimilation and convergence of journalistic values across the 14 nations studied. Despite linguistic and national differences, journalists shared the core belief that responsibility is a prerequisite of press freedom. Across European cultures, journalists hold high their responsibility to personal conscience, to journalistic standards, to their sources and to democratic values. The findings also revealed contradictions. While journalists strongly supported media responsibility, many appear reluctant to encourage professional self-criticism or to engage in the transparency that media demand of their sources. Journalists lag behind their audiences in seeing the value of media blogs and other forms of online exchange.

The data and analysis provide not only a composite view of media accountability in Europe but also nuanced exploration of differences among nations. The distinctions are instructive. For example, the study finds that Tunisian and Jordanian journalists, reflective of the ‘Arab Spring’ experience, embrace the role of the public sphere more strongly than their European counterparts. The study also showed that journalists identify in ways that transcend traditional national and cultural boundaries. (One of my favorite off-shoots of the MediaAcT research was the study with the intriguing title “How Polish is French Journalism?”.)

The study underscores journalistic scepticism of outside surveillance of their work practices. But MediaAcT also shows that the journalists tend to have a strong sense of personal ethics as well as faith in newsrooms to up-hold professional standards. This suggests that the key to media accountabil ← 2 | 3 → ity is working at the organizational level, encouraging newsrooms to more clearly—and more publicly—adhere to a code of ethics, to appoint an ombudsman or reader representative, to publish corrections when errors are made, to engage in other mechanisms encouraging reader exchange, and to more transparently explain how stories are covered. MediaAcT’s findings also highlight the vital role of journalism educators and scholars in nurturing a collective understanding of professional responsibility. The challenge, as MediaAcT has clearly shown, is to make media accountability and transparency a standard of quality journalism in practice as well as in principle. ← 3 | 4 → ← 4 | 5 →

Section A

Background and Methodology

← 5 | 6 → ← 6 | 7 →

Chapter 1

Introduction: Media Accountability—Basic Concepts and Theoretical Foundations

Susanne Fengler, Tobias Eberwein, Tanja Leppik-Bork,
Julia Lönnendonker & Judith Pies¹

Media accountability is back on the political agenda. Early in 2013 a high-ranking group of experts, initiated by EU commissioner Neelie Kroes, presented a list of media policy recommendations to ensure media freedom and pluralism in a media world going through fundamental technological and economic changes. The experts demanded that the EU and its member states make more pro-active use of competition laws to reduce the influence of ‘media barons’ in several Southern as well as Central and Eastern European countries. They also demanded that the issue of media self-regulation be tackled. Their report “A free and pluralistic media to sustain European democracy” (see Vike-Freiberga, Däubler-Gmelin, Hammersley and Maduro 2013, 21, 36) states: “All EU countries should have independent media councils.” Pointing to the example of the United Kingdom, where a press council widely considered as a rather innovative model of media self-regulation was obviously unable to properly handle, let alone prevent, the journalistic scandals associated with the News of the World case, the report envisions that future media councils will have “competences to investigate complaints” and “real enforcement powers, such as the imposition of fines, orders for printed or broadcast apologies, or removal of journalistic status.” Furthermore, the report demands more transparency from European media organizations: “To ensure that all media organisations follow clearly identifiable codes of con ← 7 | 8 → duct and editorial lines, and apply the principles of editorial independence, it should be mandatory for them to make them publicly available, by including them on their websites.”

The first suggestion relating to media accountability has particularly drawn fierce reactions from the media since then. Industry representatives and federations, as well as individual news outlets, journalists and bloggers across Europe, have attacked the report, suspecting that the EU intends to curb press freedom.² While many media managers and journalists across Europe argue that the press does an adequate self-regulation job, a small, but highly interesting recent study shows that European ombudsmen, press council members, and other professionals already actively involved in self-regulation strongly support many of the EU advisory group’s recommendations (Prinzing and Blum 2013).³ So—how should the harsh reactions of many media professionals be seen? Are they an ‘automatic’ reflex by journalists eager to preserve media independence? Or do they show that the media, which routinely investigates and criticizes all kinds of public figures and demands transparency and accountability from organizations and institutions, is somewhat immune to criticism, and reluctant to be transparent and accountable itself?

This book seeks to shed light on how the media across Europe handle issues of media self-regulation. What impact do journalists ascribe to press councils, ombudsmen, ethics codes, and the many new accountability instruments which have developed online? And thus—do existing structures of media accountability suffice, or do we urgently need new instruments and initiatives? These are the key questions in the comparative survey of 1,762 journalists in twelve European and two Arab states, conducted by the EU-funded research project “Media Accountability and Transparency in Europe” (MediaAcT).⁴ The answers are presented in this book and will provide a solid empirical basis for the heated debates currently taking place.

There is no doubt that this is a time when the future of media accountability and media self-regulation needs to be negotiated anew by media professionals and their stakeholders. The digital revolution has profoundly changed the traditional business models of the legacy media and social media activists challenge the long-term gatekeeper monopoly of journalists. The ← 8 | 9 → impact and potential of new media accountability and transparency instruments online (see also Bichler, Harro-Loit, Karmasin, Kraus, Lauk, Loit, Fengler and Schneider-Mombaur 2012) is one of the key topics of this book.⁵ Obviously, we have once again reached a turning point in the history of media self-regulation—in a similar way to the years after World War II.⁶ At that time public discontent with a press widely considered as greedy, sensationalist and politically imbalanced in many countries (McQuail [1983] 2010, 170) culminated in the United States in the establishment of the Hutchins Commission. This was a committee of intellectuals set up to investigate the status quo of journalism and develop ideas about how to make the media more accountable to the public.⁷ Among other recommendations this Commission also suggested “that the members of the press engage in vigorous mutual criticism. Professional standards are not likely to be achieved as long as the mistakes and errors, the frauds and crimes, committed by units of the press are passed over in silence by other members of the profession” (Leigh 1974, 94)—a notion almost shocking to media professionals at that time. The reactions were sharp. However, since the 1950s, journalists in many Western countries have slowly reacted to public criticism—and political pressure—with the establishment of media accountability instruments (MAIs) (see e.g. Wiedemann 1992, 245).

Another turning point for media self-regulation was the introduction of ombudsmen. In 1967, The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times in Louisville, Kentucky, were the first newspapers to install ombudsmen in the USA.⁸ In the late 1980s and 1990s, the advent of cable TV, and later the Internet, along with the deregulation of the broadcasting sector in many countries, created a new climate. Numerous quality media started to report regularly on media issues—and thus created a degree of transparency and public awareness of journalism and the media industry that was unthinkable before.

Now we seem to have reached yet another turning point. What kind of self-regulation do we expect from a media which has long escaped from the ← 10 | 11 → chains of government and become a powerful institution itself? In fact, the media has become so powerful that many politicians, who willingly engage in ‘pop politics’ designed to fit the needs of the media (Mazzoleni and Sfardini 2009), might not even dare to publicly think about holding the media to account, out of fear of the media. Indeed, the ever more prominent role mass media plays in modern ‘information societies’ in the ongoing process of ‘mediatization’ (see for example Esser, Reinemann and Fan 2001; Esser and D’Angelo 2003), where media consumption is constantly on the rise, makes the need to hold journalism to account by various stakeholders ever more pressing (see also Bardoel and d’Haenens 2004).

What could motivate journalists and media managers to become actively involved in media accountability? Quality journalism will need a competitive advantage with so many new voices online fighting for the attention of the media users. Accountability and transparency could become part of a media brand, just as other brands, which are sensitive to consumers’ changing expectations, now offer their well-educated customers full transparency over the full production process online.⁹ Thus, this book also departs from the traditional normative discussion about media accountability in journalism and mass communication studies, and draws on economic theory (see Fengler and Russ-Mohl 2005; Porlezza 2013) to develop a better understanding of why existing media self-regulation structures do not often come up with the desired results—because it might not ‘pay off’ to be a ‘good journalist’ under the given circumstances.

Media Accountability, Media Pluralism and Media Freedom

We also argue that media accountability and the maturity of the media’s self-regulation infrastructures are another, so far neglected, key indicator of media freedom and pluralism. A comparative analysis of the landscape of media accountability and self-regulation across Europe—as provided by the Media-AcT research consortium in a prior publication (Eberwein, Fengler, Lauk and Leppik-Bork 2011)—shows that Northern European countries and the United Kingdom display a multitude of MAIs. However, in many Southern and Central European countries, characterized by a high degree of political parallelism, even press councils are dysfunctional or non-existent, and often the words ‘media accountability’ do not even exist in the language.¹⁰ ← 11 | 12 →

The high ownership concentration in the Central and Eastern European countries points towards another aspect in the discussion on media accountability: the core aim of media accountability to stay independent from the state may well be undermined by the media industry serving their own rather than the public’s interests (Lauk and Denton 2011, 220). An extremely media-critical blogosphere, counterbalancing a lack of media accountability within the media sector, as in the case of Romania (see Coman, Radu, Preoteasa, Paun and Badau 2011), can be interpreted as a consequence of that. It shows interesting parallels with the situation in the ‘Arab Spring’ countries, where social media have also become the vehicles of the media accountability debate (see Pies and Madanat 2011a, 2011b). In the difficult transformation phase that these countries have now entered into, the relationship between the media and the new governments also needs to be negotiated anew (see Margani 2012). The fight over the independence of the media self-regulation mechanisms that will be created will play a central role in this process. Therefore, the results of our journalists’ survey in two Arab countries—Jordan and Tunisia—might be of particular interest to scholars and practitioners alike. ← 12 | 13 →

Mapping Media Accountability: A Comparative Approach to Media Accountability

The emergence of MAIs—or the even broader ‘media accountability culture’—in a country is obviously closely connected to the political, but also to the economic context that media professionals in the specific country operate under. Many of today’s MAIs were conceived by journalists in the United States (and, in the case of a national press council, the UK) and later emulated by media professionals abroad. As both countries have the longest traditions of press freedom in the world, these journalism cultures—benefiting from an early deregulation of the media sector—were also the first to develop instruments of media self-regulation, as noted by Marzolf (1991), Wiedemann (1992), Campbell (1999) and Puppis (2009).¹¹ However, besides political and economic influences, several other factors can impact on the emergence of an ‘accountability culture’, among them the maturity of the journalistic profession.

Obviously, accountability practices display remarkable differences across countries, which make them a fruitful subject for comparative analysis. However, even though a growing number of studies in journalism and mass communication research have analyzed media actors, structures and content from a comparative perspective (see for example Deuze 2002; Donsbach and Patterson 2004; Machill et al. 2006; Shoemaker and Cohen 2006; AIM Research Consortium 2007; Hanitzsch et al. 2010; Trappel, Meier, d’Haenens, Steemers and Thomass 2011), little comparative research has been undertaken on the field of media self-regulation and media accountability.¹² The few studies available mostly focus on national phenomena of media accountability.¹³

This volume seeks to fill this gap in contemporary mass communication research by describing and comparing structures and practices of media accountability across countries. As a ‘template’ for the comparative analysis, the volume will draw on the well-known model of media systems and journalism cultures in Western countries developed by Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini (2004). They have pointed out how national political and economic structures shape the emergence and status quo of journalism and the media. ← 13 | 14 → Furthermore—and this has made Hallin and Mancini’s model a useful tool for comparative analysis—they argue that similar trends influencing the media and journalism can be identified in specific journalism cultures crossing national borders, and accordingly develop country clusters characterized by a number of remarkable similarities:

While Hallin and Mancini do not study the existence of media self-regulation and MAIs in Western countries, they do briefly examine the existence of press councils in the three models as an indicator of journalistic professionalism (Hallin and Mancini 2004, 110, 170, 217). The chapters contained in Section C of this volume will explore in depth the emergence and impact of the numerous accountability instruments within the different journalism cultures as described by Hallin and Mancini. This book will also critically assess the heuristic value of their model for the study of media accountability, as even a quick glance at media accountability structures in the liberal model suggests considerable differences within one journalism culture. For example, while a Press Complaints Commission exists in the United Kingdom, no lasting national press council has been established in the United States (see Fengler 2002). Thus, Section C of this book will explore and explain deviations from the Hallin and Mancini model when it comes to the study of media accountability structures.