MVM Consulting

Ethics Guidelines for Public Media Employees

On the Clock or Off: Public Service Ethics the Same in Today's Networked World.

I just completed a major consulting task: leading a working group through the minefield of addressing employee ethical behavior when employees aren't actually on the job.

The resulting 28-page document, "Public Media Ethics Never Log Off: Guidelines for Public Media Employees in Their Off-Hours" is posted at the Public Media Integrity Project website. (Or you can shortcut to the pdf download here, but I recommend visiting the site to learn more about the entire project and to see the five other ethics papers there.)

Here are a few excerpts from "Public Media Employees Never Log Off:"

Ethical behavior is not what you do because you are paid to do it. It is what you do because it is the right thing to do.

Ideally, one’s professional and personal ethics align completely. Such congruity is particularly desirable in the public media domain where societal principles of fair and honest public service warrant, and benefit from, a like-minded workforce.

By living well-integrated personal and professional ethics, public media practitioners better maintain a 24-7 vigil over their medium’s most precious and perishable asset: the public’s trust.

***

What might make these findings seem new or innovative – and potentially controversial for some – is that, in the face of a rapidly shifting media landscape, they call for a stricter, not looser, moral code. They partly borrow from core ethics of traditional journalists and recommend adoption by the broader public media sphere. This is not so journalistic values may pervade public media but so that essential -- and voluntary -- public service values are better enshrined and protected.

The paper bases its arguments on several basic principles -- that public service requires commitment to its purpose, that public trust is the ultimate test, and that congruency between professional and personal behavior protects that trust.

The guidelines partly arose in response to some prominent incidents of late. The Juan Williams firing by NPR was one case of employee misadventures done away from the job. Others were Lisa Simeone's and Caitlin Curran's political protests. But mostly the guidelines were instigated to address emerging concerns arising from social media use.

Take social media. This powerful new tool allows any user of the Internet to publish facts or opinions or anything else instantly and globally… available for billions of people to witness forever more. This changes media. And it changes the public.

But does it change public media's core values? No.

If anything, the rush onto the Internet has increased the need for a clear set of policies based on core values. Public media can help set standards for trustworthy content and for responsible behaviors to go with it. This is particularly relevant within a new media sphere that, despite its exciting advantages, comes with great excess…

Below is the heart of the project -- the recommended voluntary guidelines themselves.

Guidelines for Public Media Employees in Their Off-Hour Activities

All public media organizations, by virtue of their mission, hold a high ethical commitment to serving the public interest and earning public trust. Given the CPB statutory requirement on "objectivity and balance," public media’s ethos is similar to that of journalists who seek truth and accountability. And, like journalists, this requires voluntarily ethical obligations on and off the job.

What follows are guidelines -- somewhat distilled from journalism -- apropos to public media employees in their off-hour activities with an eye toward protecting the public trust in public media.

Principles

• Serve the public interest
• Seek public trust

Policies

• Defend the public trust of public media
• Be congruent in personal and professional behavior

Practices

• Separate personal communication from employer communication

  • Use your work email address only for professional correspondence

  • Use work computers and servers only for professional purposes

  • Avoid using company name, logo, call letters or other official identification on personal blogs or personal social media accounts

  • Use disclaimers that identify personal opinions as your own, not those of your employer

  • Avoid divulging internal, work-related discussions, plans, data, etc. Assume business meetings are off-the-record

  • When building an online following, recognize that by using your professional identity, you do so as a shared endeavor with your employer. Otherwise keep separate your personal and professional identities and followings

• Assume all online communication is public, everywhere, forever

  • Manage your online reputation carefully

  • Think before you post

  • Understand terms of service may allow distribution and storage of personal information

  • Monitor what OTHERS write on your wall or tag in photographs. Request its removal if you find it damaging

  • Respect privacy – don’t post items or pictures of others without their consent. Err on the side of privacy 

• Practice Transparency

  • Don’t hide behind a cloak of anonymity. Assume your identity is easy to find

  • If you engage in altering Wikipedia or establishing other reference information online, divulge your interests

• Model integrity and high standards in your personal life, online or off

  • Know and mind the law. Don’t use ignorance as an excuse

  • Strive for accuracy and truthfulness

  • Respect copyright

  • Be polite, contributive (“Do unto others…”)

  • Resist anger, deliberate provocations or taking things too personally

  • Be proactive – confirm facts before you post, be quick to correct errors, inform others ahead of posting if you plan to mention them

  • Avoid dealing in rumors or gossip 

• Protect You and Your Employer’s “Objectivity and Balance” Standards

  • If you are a journalist, follow your journalistic code of ethics (for example, see "KQED Editorial Guidelines for Editorial Staff" in Appendix III)

  • If you are not a journalist, but your station is regarded as a news station, you’ll need to be equally mindful of the journalistic code of ethics

  • If you are not a journalist and your station is not regarded as a news station, you will still want to abide by ethical tenets that assure public trust in you, your company and the broader public media sphere

  • Avoid bumper stickers, lawn signs, and other displays of partisan preference on controversial or sensitive issues in which you are trusted to engage non-preferentially

  • Similarly don’t display online badges, tokens or other insignia associated with an issues agenda

  • Avoid links or “retweets” when they may be interpreted as partisan endorsements on controversial or sensitive topics

  • Similarly, avoid joining or participating in online or offline groups with agendas that may give rise to real or perceived bias on matters of public interest or controversy

  • Similarly, be mindful of “liking” or “friending” people and things that imply partisan endorsements on sensitive issues

  • Avoid trafficking in fake news as the joke can backfire (by someone taking it seriously and causing you embarrassment)

  • Encourage sensitivity to journalistic ethics by your spouse or partner. Their political bumper sticker or lawn sign can be mistaken for your own.

  • Always be mindful to differentiate fact from opinion, and label accordingly

  • Exercise journalistic privilege -- such as use of press passes, press access, press credentials -- only in bona fide ways with appropriate personnel

  • Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment so as to avoid any real or perceived influence by those with an agenda or with whom you need detachment and impartiality to assure public trust in your work

• Be sensitive to conflicts of interest -- real or perceived -- and take measures to minimize their negative outcomes.

  • Avoid political involvement or running for public office

  • Tread carefully in joining community organizations especially if they are likely to be major subjects of news coverage

  • Having more than one employer can put you between conflicting interests. Discuss your primary employer’s policies and concerns first. If you have no primary employer, discuss both employers’ policies and concerns up front

  • Recuse yourself from situations where you have a conflict of interest

• Proactively communicate with your employer/supervisor.

  • Bring to your supervisor’s attention, as early as possible, any situation that raises ethical questions or has the potential for diminishing public trust in you or your company

  • Use a vetting process to define ethical demarcations by noting and weighting key factors and striving for consistency across time and among all employees

• Implement the guidelines!

  • Introduce them in the hiring process

  • Reinforce them through professional development opportunities

  • Incorporate them into individual work plans

  • Post them online

  • Transmit them through the company culture by drawing upon them frequently in relevant situations

  • Be careful not to undermine them

Disclaimer: Nothing in these guidelines should be interpreted as prohibiting communications protected by federal or state statutes.

Comments?

Feel free to post feedback below... but I know the folks at the Public Media Integrity project, which commissioned these guidelines, would prefer you let them know directly on their comments page.

The Challenge of Scaling Public Media News, Part Two

In a previous post, I was showing slides I used for a conference presentation.

The conference was for programmers in public radio and the panel was asking whether public radio journalists could "step up" to meet the hopes of many who see pub-media as a surviving hope for local news across the United States.

My argument is that, yes, indeed we are growing public radio newsrooms but the pace is slow... and we'll need to get creative and entrepreneurial to speed it up.

Here's one problem: spending on local news. Over half the stations that are NPR members have 3 or fewer full-time news people. We're doing better than commercial radio but that just isn't saying much. The chart below shows the bulk of stations spend below $250K a year on local news.

Still, if you add it all up, our public radio system is investing roughly $120-million a year in local news and public affairs. Most of that spending is on salaries -- and, of course, most of the spending is being done by the largest stations.

What comes from those dollars and those newsroom staffs?

An estimated 100-thousand hours of local news and public affairs content each year!

The chart below shows that most stations produce about an hour a day or less of local news. In many cases, that's just right. In some cases, it could be higher (but let's remember that quality is more important the quantity). No one particularly wants gobs and gobs of local news unless perhaps you live in a major metro area AND you get the quality content you demand. But in most cases, the mix of local to national is kept proportional to interest and resources.

 In a survey I conducted in 2010 (for PRNDI with help from Ken Mills and Steve Martin), I found a healthy share of stations had increased their local news programming in the previous year....

 ... and a healthy share planned to increase their local news programming in the upcoming year (2011)...

To better understand what local newsrooms are actually producing, we asked about various categories of local news. The following chart makes clear that daily newscasts are the most common staple... fueled with daily spot and feature reports. A solid core of stations do the serious news stuff -- series, specials, documentaries -- and a fair number cover breaking news, though that had rarely been the forte of public media in the past.

(Note: the chart labels got upcut... where it says "daily" and "weekly" and "monthly," refers to talk shows. You can see, for example, that daily talk shows are on a quarter of all stations.)

The last section of the presentation focused on innovation. We look at how local newsroom are adapting to online news, other digital tools, and the use of partnerships to extend and leverage the local public media journalism.

In the graph below, we found from a job study (used by permission from CPB), that a majority of the public media news workforce includes online platforms in their radio or TV work. Overall, almost two-thirds of public media journalists had multi-platform responsibilities. Very few, however, had online only responsibilities.

 The following series of pie charts show the frequency of digital tool deployment by public radio stations. Green is high usage. Red is no usage. (Light green is some use. Light orange is rare use.) Scroll down and see how the red pie wedges grow in size as the technology grows in complexity.

 

 

Finally, many observers agree that public radio is going to need to broaden beyond its radio limits if it wants to serve more constituencies with its valuable content. This means exploring partnerships in the broader media ecology. Stations are familiar with some partnerships -- with regional radio networks, for example, or working with the NPR news desk and bureau chief -- but they are less accustomed to partnering with bloggers, local websites, nonprofit groups and other media (except newspapers, there's a fair bit of that going on). The chart below compares the average frequency of partnerships by stations on a four-point scale (4=very frequent, 3=frequent, 2=infrequent, 1=rarely).

 

The picture that emerges from these data is a system that is moving in the right direction, vis a vis growing local news and modernizing systems. Yet, it is a very large field and a relatively small share of the players are playing at an advanced level.

More to come on the advantages of scale. Stay tuned.

The Challenge of Scaling Public Media News, Part One

I was on a panel at the 2011 Public Radio Programming Conference. The topic was "Can Public Media Journos Step Up?" Moderator Jessica Clark said there have been many studies and commissions and professors all pressing the point that public radio and television need to play a bigger role in journalism these days because of the catastrophic loss of journalists in newspapers.

Below are the slides I used to make the case that 1) public media news is on the upswing, but 2) it's hard to imagine how we'll grow it really big in any short period of time.

The title slide above was a word cloud derived from my experimental research site: localnpr.org.

I started the talk like this:

"Something happened since I was last on a panel for PRPD. That was a number of years ago… I was still at KPBS in San Diego… and just elected president of PRNDI. What happened is that LOCAL NEWS is now COOL!"

I explained that it wasn't always cool. There was plenty of debate about whether it was worth the investment in local news. Some researchers didn't think audiences cared for it... although plenty of stations did it because it was so obvious a part of their local mission.

Next slide...

"...what made it officially cool was this. The CPB plan assembled by Terry Clifford, Tom Thomas and a cast of many more.

And as you know… one of the key planks in this “master plan for our future…” is an ambitious goal for news…"

Those are gratifying words.

I turned to my fellow panelist Bill Buzenberg at this point and shrugged a quick aside comment, "Of course Bill and I have been saying stuff like this for years… but… at least now it’s official!"

And the reason for this, of course, is that audiences are hungry for news…

"This is a chart -- from the aforementioned report – starting in 1997 showing almost 50% audience growth for public radio between then and 2008… and a projected doubling by 2014.

And apparently it won’t take that long to get to 40 million… former NPR CEO Vivian Schiller said earlier this year that we may already be close to 40 million… (by including online users) which would be twice that of 1997… and triple the audience of around 1990.

News is the primary driver of this growth. Clearly news is our main mission now. The more and better we do it – not only do we grow the audience and grow the revenue (oh yes, revenue is going up, too) but most importantly for any nonprofit enterprise: the better our public service outcomes like making our communities more informed, livable and self-determined.

So local news is not just cool… it’s an essential element to each of our stations.

But local news still has quite the hill to climb."

"This is data from cpb… showing staffing levels of all the stations reporting to CPB. The clump on the left is 1997. The clump on the right is 2009. 2001 is in the middle. Blue is radio. Red is TV. And Green is both of those combined. These are FT positions only.

You'll recall that radio has been growing its audience by 50%... and here we see the corresponding growth of station jobs -- by 36%. TV meanwhile shed jobs. And the net effect is slight growth overall for public broadcasting.

One quick note about this data. There are radio jobs blended into the red TV column… because the CPB lumps all dual licensees into the TV data. So I think we can surmise that TV’s decline was actually steeper and radio’s increase was actually even bigger.

This TV vs radio thing is not just an interesting aside. Many talk about “public media” today and lump all the stations together… and include many other non-broadcast non-profit news organizations – which I’m fine with… but when CPB, by statute, splits the federal allocation 75-25 with the big share going to TV… it’s a bit annoying -- unless radio and TV really are working as combined services, which is happening but not very rapidly. (See KPBS as very good example.)

"I just think it is remarkable what public radio is doing. In 2009… radio employed 34% of public broadcasting’s FT people.

But let’s get back to the local news piece of this… "

"Last year, I undertook a survey of local public media newsrooms. Thanks to Ken Mills and Steve Martin for helping me on that. And to PRNDI for backing it.

Here we see how many full-time employees at public broadcasting stations have what they consider a primary role in producing local news or public affairs. You can see I refrained from lumping the joint licensees in with the TV.  The bottom line is that news people amount to only 13% of the total pubcasting workforce. Put another way, 87% of the people working full-time in all of the stations out there do something other than the journalism."

To get a sense of how our workforce compares to what's out there commercially, this graphic shows that we are still small in comparison. (Bigger in trust, however. Public media has been found to have very high levels of trust.) But staff wise, we are still outnumbered. In radio, the gap is shrinking fast.

This chart used recently by the FCC report on local news shows the dramatic drop in radio news staffing over a 30 year period. And of course the 2012 installment missing from this chart would show the column below 10,000 now.

This is another look at the same phenomena... only this is the drop in the median size of radio newsrooms in the USA. Over the past decade, due to rapid consolidation in commercial radio, the typical radio newsroom is now only one person and that means lots of rip & read newscasts.

 
Of course, what I have found in my survey work is the opposite trend in public radio: we're growing our newsrooms and our national median is 3 journalists per stations.

This chart from 2010 and the next one looking ahead to 2011 show most stations just trying to maintain their staffing during the bad economy... yet a healthy chunk in both years are GROWING their news staffing.

 

And here's one more eye opener. Remember how all-news radio used to dominate the major markets in America. Now, they still do, except they aren't commerical stations, they're public radion stations...

TO BE CONTINUED......