Reporter bios don’t improve readers’ trust in news outlets

https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/02/readers-dont-care-that-you-were-editor-of-your-college-newspaper-and-reporter-bios-alone-dont-improve-trust-in-your-news-organization/

by hhs • 6 years ago

39 16 6 years ago

niemanlab.org

gonewest• 6 years ago

No surprises there. Just yesterday, I saw someone comment online that a particular opinion article was poorly researched and written like an amateur. Where the author has a Pulitzer and a Gerald Loeb Award with decades in the business at major periodicals and newspapers. It seems clear the judged "quality" of the opinion has mostly to do with whether the reader agrees.

CyanBird• 6 years ago

I'm interested in what article you saw, could you post it?

grawprog• 6 years ago

What does it really matter what journalists actually write a piece when the publication's editors change it and have the final say for what gets published anyway?

A lot of people seem to forget how much editing by more than one person actually goes into a lot of professional writing. Editors probably have the most control over things that end up published, more so than the original writers of a piece usually do.

Nasrudith• 6 years ago

Well aren't Pulitzers more about what you uncover than how well you write and research in the book learning sense? A half illiterate crank who exposed real and concrete evidence of a massive scandal say for a deliberately nonsensical example "Microsoft is bribing the FBI to assassinate rivals" would dessrve it even if half of his works were about lizard people.

Obviously being a crazy idiot doesn't help but being a good investigator and a good writer aren't the same thing.

jduwiuwjdhdh• 6 years ago

No one with any real sense trusts journalists anymore. You can blame the internet, the rise of sensationalism, or the total lack of effort to cover politics in a neutral fashion, but the press lost its credibility a long time ago and frankly I see no reason to trust them now. The biggest use of the press in my life is to follow what the current popular talking points are.

zoonosis• 6 years ago

“Using a personal photo and including personal details in a reporter’s biography made participants feel they knew the reporter better, but this feeling didn’t influence readers’ attitudes about a news organization more broadly,”

IME, people trust individuals more than institutions. So, their level of trust for the news organization doesn't really matter if they trust the specific journalist.

keanzu• 6 years ago

I misread this as "bias" rather than bios. I must be predisposed to associate the words "Reporter" and "bias".

BitwiseFool• 6 years ago

My mind read it as "BIOS" at first and I figured it was a typo. Then after reading your comment I finally realized "bios" is short for biographies.

aeternum2• 6 years ago

Isn't this a positive? Society would be better off if we avoid appeal to authority and instead focus on evidence-based decision-making.

shadowfox• 6 years ago

Society would be better off if we avoid appeal to authority and instead focus on evidence-based decision-making

While this sounds awesome in isolation (and is perhaps even a goal to aim for), I am in two minds about the reality of it.

In our society as it currently exists, most people are not in a position to collect, correctly understand and evaluate evidence for things outside their expertise. And some, like me, have very limited spheres of expertise to begin with. So people rely a lot on a "chain of trust" for informing their opinions and decisions. This is of course gameable and is indeed often gamed.

But I am not sure this is avoidable. It does not seem possible today to teach oneself to a point where as an individual you can form a fully independent opinion, solely based on the study of evidence, in any reasonable time for very many different things.

Maybe I am just pessimistic!

aeternum2• 6 years ago

I agree with you, and no one can take the time to research everything from evidence. The chain of trust does have a place.

However I'd also argue that this is the only time in history that we have almost the whole of human knowledge accessible at our fingertips from anywhere in the world within fractions of a second. If there ever were a time that we could look up actual evidence without expending inordinate effort, that time is now!

mattkrause• 6 years ago

I think the study is missing a condition.

Both of the biographies they used suggest that the article was written by generic, if competent, journalist. Neither include details that might push you towards trusting this specific person. Since the test article was about a 'superbug', imagine one profile said "Jim completed a masters in immunology at Columbia University before moving to NYU'S Carter Journalism Institute." Without that, it's hard to know whether readers just ignore these blurbs altogether...

beloch• 6 years ago

Here's a study that might be even more interesting:

1. Have a reporter write a series of stories on several topics.

2. Label these stories with the same author name and have Group A read them.

3. Label these stories with a bunch of different names and have Group B read them.

4. Have both groups rate the trustworthiness of each story as they read them.

My theory is that we tend to trust sources we know more. I would expect that Group A would report higher levels of trust for the last stories they read, even if they disagree with the author, because they've been told they're reading the same person's work.

The way I personally read news reflects this. There are many authors on the news sources I frequent who I am familiar with. Some I consider to be heavily biased or idiots but, being familiar with their shortcomings, I feel I can get a better picture of the objective truth from their work than I can from reading something written by someone I know nothing about. I trust authors based on what I have read from them in the past rather than their biographies.

For this reason, bios and clearly visible author names/pictures may not increase the reader's trust in isolated articles, but it may help build trust with regular readers over time.

aaron695• 6 years ago

Single human beings can no longer report.

The internet means they can be fact checked immediately. Which means they immediately will be found in error, large or small.

No one trusts any reporter anymore, that time has passed.

segmondy• 6 years ago

Yes it does if they have earned our trust. For instance, I trust stuff from Matt Levine. I don't trust opinion piece tho

Reporter bios don’t improve readers’ trust in news outlets

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