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Staff
Sarah Bauer, Executive Director
sarah (dot) bauer (at) news-council (dot) org
Erika Roland, Development Director
erika (dot) roland (at) news-council (dot) org
Hanna Dorn, Operations Assistant
hanna (at) news-council (dot) org
Minnesota
News Council
12 South Sixth Street, Suite 927, Minneapolis, MN 55402
Phone: 612.341.9357 Fax: 612.341.9358
Web: www.news-council.org
Email: info (at) news-council (dot) org
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Members
The
News Council's membership
consists of volunteer members and a hearing chairperson.
About half of the members are from the public at large, and half are
from the media. Members do not represent the news outlets or
organizations they work for; they participate as independent
professionals.
Members
serve a three-year term, which can be renewed once. Anyone can
apply for membership. Members
are chosen through an application and interview process by sitting
members on a membership committee.
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Board of Directors
The
Minnesota News Council's Board
of Directors oversees the activities and the finances of
the organization.
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How we got started:
In the late 1960s the Minnesota Newspaper
Association recognized that public trust in the news media was
declining. The association, which represents the interests of
about 385 papers across the state (25 or so of them dailies,
most of the rest weeklies), dispatched a University of Minnesota
journalism professor, Ed Gerald, to study the work of the British
Press Council in London. He was impressed with its ability to
resolve complaints and to restore public trust, and he came
back urging the association to start a news council here.
It would have 24 voting members, half of them journalists and
half laypersons, and a sitting justice of the state supreme
court as chairperson at public hearings on unresolved complaints.
The Minnesota News Council was incorporated in December 1970 and heard its first case in January 1971. It upheld
the complaint of a legislator who said the Union Advocate newspaper
had unfairly described him as being on the take from the liquor
lobby. At the hearing the editor admitted that he had not checked
the veracity of the story because it was too good a story to lose.
Few of the cases since have proved so easy.
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