What Do These Two Stories Have in Common? Trust and Transparency, Of Course

It sometimes takes me well into the following week to get through the entire Sunday New York Times. Thanks to today's weekly snow storm, I'm finally wrapping up my reading...

And one of Sunday's articles made me re-think the way I'd read a piece on Monday.

Monday, Eric Lipton wrote about the fight over raising (or not) the minimum wage (full article, here). There's a lot of big lobbying money on both sides, he noted, and the biggest money often comes disguised:

Just four blocks from the White House is the headquarters of the Employment Policies Institute, a widely quoted economic research center whose academic reports have repeatedly warned that increasing the minimum wage could be harmful, increasing poverty and unemployment.

But something fundamental goes unsaid in the institute's reports: The nonprofit group is run by a public relations firm that also represents the restaurant industry, as part of a tightly coordinated effort to defeat the minimum wage increase that the White House and Democrats have pushed for.

The conservative group is not alone in disguising its wolf in sheep's clothing, of course. Liberals are just as guilty.

But when you read an article that quotes a "research paper" produced by the Blah-Blah Institute of Economics, do you automatically wonder whether BBIE is a liberal or a conservative institution? I don't. BBIE sounds pretty non-partisan.

The issue of transparency became clearer to me when I finally worked my way through the whole "Review" section of the Sunday paper, which includes editorials, op-eds, letters, and "The Public Editor" column.

In last Sunday's Public Editor column, Margaret Sullivan wrote about impartiality in journalism (full column, here).

Back at the dawn of time, in my first post-college "real" job, I was a newspaper reporter for a small-city daily. In those days, while the "New Journalism" was already slashing through the curtain of pure impartiality, we tried hard not to let our own feelings and biases show. If anything, we bent over backwards to be fair to the "other guy". But of course we had feelings and biases, which were never disclosed to our readers.

As Sullivan writes,

Journalists bring their backgrounds, their beliefs, perhaps their faith, their politics, and their relationships to what they do. Traditional journalism says: "Set those aside. Be as objective as possible." A newer line of thought says: "Be who you are and own it. Just tell readers where you're coming from."

I agree with that "newer line of thought", although it's a lot easier for a columnist or critic than for a beat reporter. And how much should I disclose about myself? Where, exactly, am I "coming from"? To write about distrust of bankers, should I disclose my credit score? I don't think so -- but if my husband were a hedge-fund director, I should probably mention that (he isn't).

But, as Sullivan notes, "transparency is the new objectivity". So be transparent. Because that's the foundation for Trust.

And journalists,don't just tell me about yourselves: if you're going to quote an Blah-Blah Institute of Economics paper, tell me who funds BBIE, and not just what the paper says.

If you want my Trust, I need your Transparency.