Reconnecting To Core Values p.25

By: DEBRA GERSH HERNANDEZ RECONNECTING TO THE core values of journalism was a subject frequently returned to during the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention in Washington.
In fact, for the past year, ASNE has been conducting the Journalism Values Institute (JVI), which saw 30 editors participate in forums with readers around the country.
The result of the yearlong effort is a Journalism Values Handbook and companion video designed "to help newspapers revitalize journalism's core values and restore connections with the public."
During a panel discussion of the issue at the ASNE annual convention in Washington, Richard C. Harwood, president of the Harwood Group, which conducted the research for ASNE, said that all of the core values identified by the participating editors "begin and end with credibility."
As the JVI process continued, Harwood said, the definition of credibility expanded, and four key values that strengthen or undermine credibility were identified as balance, accuracy, leadership and accessibility.
"Everyone in the newsroom has to make a decision about these values," Harwood noted, adding that while a newspaper has to remain independent, it also does not want to be perceived by its readers as an outsider.
"There is no simple truth when it comes to these values. It's something each newsroom journalist has to work through on his own," he said.
The Journalism Values Handbook, which was distributed at the convention and is available from the ASNE, was created by the Ethics and Values Committee, chaired by Spokane, Wash., Spokesman-Review editor Chris Peck. The project received "generous" funding from the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation.
In his introduction to the handbook, Peck wrote that in the process of debating these issues, participants achieved "a deeper understanding of what it truly will take for newspapers to practice, reinforce and, when necessary, revise the rules that lie at the heart of our business and are equally important to the public."
Peck noted that the participating editors came away from the project "with at least one shared belief: The conversation about core values is crucial to the future of journalism.
"To survive in a changing media environment, newsrooms across the nation must engage their staffs and readers in a similar discussion," he wrote, adding that the JVI handbook was the tool to achieve that end.
Included in its findings and suggestions, the handbook identified six key, interconnected values that were defined by the JVI editors.
They are: balance/fairness/wholeness; accuracy/ authenticity; leadership; accessibility; credibility; and news judgment.
"The six enduring values must be simultaneously, not independently, practiced," the handbook noted. "The values are formed by the newspaper's relationship to its communities and by the preconceived views and assumptions that journalists bring with them."
In his keynote address, outgoing ASNE president William B. Ketter of the Quincy, Mass., Patriot Ledger, called the JVI "a worthy effort to improve the quality of the journalism that we practice ? a significant step toward narrowing the respect gap with the public."
"I urge this society, in concert with like-minded journalism organizations, to find the means to make the institute a permanent fixture," Ketter said, adding, "It is especially important when you peer into the future and consider the potential lax values in the raw information world of cyberspace."
?("There is no simple truth when it comes to these values. It's something each newsroom journalist has to work through on his own.") [Caption]
?(? Richard C. Harwood, president of the Harwood Group, which conducted the research for ASNE) [Photo & Caption]