How to Start a News Council by Bob Shaw The purpose of this piece Following the "60 Minutes" segment about our Minnesota News Council on December 8, 1996, our office received the same query from about a dozen states: "How does one start a news council?" Those seriously interested may find some help from our experience. We’ve been running our council for 29 years, making our own tradition without the opportunity to learn from the experience of other comparable councils. Here, then, is a road map, a few pieces of advice which may help others to take the right steps and – equally important – avoid the wrong ones. This is not the work of a committee. The thoughts are my own. Not everyone on the Council will agree with everything I say, but I believe we have general agreement on the main points. With that, let me proceed to map out the high roads and the low roads into this relatively unexplored country, the American state-level news council. Don’t rush into it. Go into it with your eyes wide open. The sad history of the National News Council, several local councils in Colorado and Illinois, and councils around the world seem to prove one point: that by and large the media doesn’t like councils. Publishers and owners of media organizations come around when they understand that they can save a lot of lawyers’ fees and court costs by using a council’s services. The working reporter or editor, though, at best tolerates a council. Who can blame them? What reporter or editor wants someone asking for a justification of his or her work? Journalists deride news – and press – councils just as lawyers bad-mouth their own ethical boards. Doctors do the same with their licensing boards. But it’s an attitude born of fear. The public loves the idea of a council, and the public sees the need for it. The media should see the need, too. We believe there is one necessary and sufficient reason why a council is a good idea: it’s good for the reputation of the press. We have noticed that when members of the public, as complainants, go through our process, their respect for the press is higher at the end than it was in the beginning. They see that our council, composed equally of press and public members, is no slick public-relations ploy, but an exercise in fundamental fairness. They see, as did our great first chairman, Justice C. Donald Peterson, that a news council is a bridge of good will, "a gutsy challenge from a press that is not only free but responsible." When the public sees the media discussing our ethics in public – and in a format that includes representation from the public – their respect for the media goes up a notch or two. Our council was created by the Minnesota Newspaper Association, whose membership includes every general-interest newspaper in the state. The newspaper industry sheltered the council for five years in the association’s office, cutting it loose only after it could stand on its own two feet. It is difficult for me to imagine how the council could have survived without that incubation period. We "lucked out" in another way at the start by having the support of our two largest daily newspapers – Minneapolis Star and Minneapolis Tribune (later combined into one) and, after a short period, of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Had that not been so, our new vehicle would have collapsed before it got to its first filling station. So the first and most fundamental point, clearly borne out by the history of our and other councils, is this: without the active support of the press – in particular the daily newspaper press – any council seems doomed to failure. The press, after all, has "the last word." A major daily newspaper can wound a council simply by benign neglect: minimal coverage or no coverage at all. A council can never be inflicted on the press, nor should it be. The press must want it. The board of our newspaper association, when it approved the experiment in 1970, thought it could see a long-range benefit in bringing the public in on – instead of locking them out of – discussions of journalistic ethics. They wanted a council; following the board’s approval, the 380 newspapers of our state decided to try out the new idea. If the managing editor or publisher of the largest daily newspaper(s) in your area wants a council, as was the case here; or if the manager of the state’s newspaper association and significant members of the board want a council, it could work. If, on the other hand, a person outside the press wants to start a council and the metropolitan daily paper is lukewarm or hostile and the state newspaper association is the same, I have my doubts that any experiment like this will succeed. It’s a rocky road, though, and a surprising amount of work to hear and handle complaints from the public. Here, the, are first steps I recommend you take: 1. Form a "core" committee which at best would include a representative – preferably a managing editor – from your state’s largest newspaper. Call, too, on the executive secretary of your state’s Broadcasters’ Association. Our experience with our electronic brethren is mixed; two of the five Twin Cities TV stations do not cooperate with us, but one large station (WCCO-TV, subject of a complaint by Northwest Airlines and the resultant piece on "60 Minutes" on December 8) and two other stations both cooperate and support us financially. Get one of their executives on your "core", if you can. Others to include – but don’t get too large a core group! – may be representatives from: 1. Business and industry. From the start, you’ll need someone with business experience and financial expertise. You’ll need a person familiar with your business community and the know-how to get out there and raise money. One of our strongest members was the executive director of our state Better Business Bureau. 2. Academia. If you know a journalism professor who is respected in the field, recruit that person. In our case, we recruited the president of our state university. 3. Law. Lawyers and judges are well acquainted with processing complaints. Shoot big. Talk to your state bar association. Get their president or the organization’s executive director. That will give you two or three persons. Add a managing editor, TV news director, and a representative from the newspaper association and you’ll have a good start. Then meet, study, and learn about other councils. 2. Decide what kind of council you want. We decided to hear complaints at hearings that are open to the public. We would not, as the British had done, hear complaints in secret on the basis of submitted materials. Complaints to our council are heard personally and in public (unless circumstances do not allow that, then they can be heard on written submissions). From the start we decided that no complaint would be too "trivial" for us to handle. For 28 years, with a few exceptions, we have handled complaints from "little people" – a policeman, a candidate, a housewife, a rural physician, a member of the Men’s Rights Association, a group of Hispanic factory workers, an anonymous young incest victim. But councils can have other functions as well. Do you want your council to mediate complaints? Sponsor public meetings? Publish? Teach? Act as an ethics resources to both the media and the community? News councils have seen their function differently. We decided that we would only hear complaints. In retrospect, this was a mistake. If it weren’t for Mike Wallace and the talents of our executive director Gary Gilson, we would still be begging our way along on a back street. A council, if it is to get the word out, can’t simply sit there and wait for complaints. It must spread the word to the public through every device. That, of course, calls for the kind of executive whose heart is in the work, who likes public speaking, and who does it well. 3. Get a chairperson. Judges make excellent council chairpersons. We’ve had six, all sitting judges on our state’s supreme court. Judges are good for two reasons: (1) They exude authority and know how to run a hearing, and (2) With a supreme court justice as chairman, any council commands a certain prestige. Our chairman does not comment at the hearing, he merely presides, and he does not vote. Watch out for lawyers. As council members certain lawyers have been among our best members. But outside, they’re a hazard. Following the British example, we decided that complainants must speak for themselves. We allow lawyers to be present at a hearing, but they may not speak. If a complainant has proceeded on the path to litigation, we won’t touch the complaint with a 100-foot pole. Our process is an alternative to litigation. With a "core" team and a judge in the wings, now... 4. Organize. Go through the well-known steps of composing articles and bylaws, obtaining non-profit status from the IRS, and selecting members of your first council. Keep the council small: Ours, in my view, is too big: 25. I favor no more than 15 – seven from the media – seven from public and a chairperson. Be sure you have a "hands-on" executive committee that not only supervises the director’s work but pitches in and actively helps – particularly in raising money. A person with business acumen on this committee is an absolute "must." Pick council members who are well-known for their interest in public affairs. Our first council included the state’s attorney general, the president of our state university, the president of the Minnesota League of Women Voters, a member of our newspaper association’s board, and a number of well-known editors and publishers. A council so composed was difficult to ignore. Don’t become trapped by the concept of "representation. " The problem never became a great one for us, but in my opinion it has great potential for mischief. I recommend that all candidates for council membership be carefully instructed that if they feel they "represent" any particular group in the population, they must check that representation at the door. They are expected to use their own good judgment applied on the merits, not to carry water for outside special interests. If this point is ignored, a council could easily become a babel of "activists." 5. The money, the money. If your council is sheltered by a newspaper association or a university, you’re lucky. (Ours was given free housing by our university for several years after the newspaper association cut it loose.) If you have no such "shelter", you’ll have to raise, at the very least, about $80,000 for your first year’s expenses (a director, a half-time secretary, and normal office costs.) Where will this money come from? Raising funds from foundations is probably your best bet, but that takes time and can be very difficult. The news council concept is unique enough that it doesn’t fit into most foundation guidelines. The most prudent act of all – if the council is not "sheltered" – might be to put everything on hold until money is in the bank. Do not labor under the illusion that a half-time or a volunteer can manage a state council. It’s a full-time job. You’ll be surprised at the time it takes for the careful handling of complaints. In the best of all possible worlds, you have some money in the bank. 6. Work out your complaint procedure. We’ve made changes in ours several times, but the main requirements have remained constant: (1) that complainant must sign waiver of libel, (2) that the complaint must relate to information which has been printed or aired – relates, that is, to what a news medium has done, not to what it has not done; (3) that a good-faith effort has been made by the complainant to resolve the issue directly with the news medium, and (4) that the process is controlled by certain deadlines. We decided that if a news medium refused to cooperate, we would hear the complaint anyway. Study our procedures. Let’s assume that these factors are firmly in the equation, now. 7. Announce the birth of your baby. Call a press conference. You’re off and running. Confessional bench: We made one big mistake and several small ones The big one At the beginning, we neglected management, in particular, the management of money. In spite of our stellar membership and the careful work our group was accomplishing, the council had one glaring, structural weakness: the lack of an executive committee to support and supervise the work of its executive. Three young persons – two men, one woman, one after another – managed the council after it was "cut loose" in 1971. All were devoted to their work, and all eventually found that their main job was to solicit money for their own salaries. What was lacking was the existence of an executive committee and – on the council itself – persons with experience in the business and financial management. Council members felt their only duty was to show up at hearings. Eight years ago our council almost perished – not for laudable reasons – but simple mismanagement. All executives – particularly executives managing non-profit organizations – need hard heads on executive committees. They need people familiar with finance, not only to review financial performance. The organization also needs persons who will roll up their sleeves, pitch in, go out and get the oxygenated blood which keeps any organization going – that thing called money. We never learned how to handle complaints originating from the non-metropolitan sections of our state Our state measures about 400 miles, north to south. How many persons in, say, International Falls, 300 miles to the north, use our services? There’s an answer lurking here somewhere, and it involves using submitted materials and satellites or the internet and, again, money. No complaints Many will complain, few will follow up. One factor certainly is that complainants, given time, "cool off." Another factor is that people are intimated by the nature of a face-to-face hearing against media institutions and people they perceive as powerful. We work to reduce the adversarial nature of our hearings and have made our procedure as easy and non-bureaucratic as we can. Lack of an outside nominating committee Our council picks its own successors. I believe that’s wrong: it inevitably results in members nominating people they know, producing a body of like-minded members bonded by warm feelings for each other. I recommend an outside group to interview and present names to the council for election. In recent years we have advertised our Council openings to the general public and have had some success in getting a wider range of nominations. The fear of precedent Media lawyers fear the accumulation of council decisions because it could be used by plaintiffs in libel cases. It’s true, the work of a council creates precedent. For example, several of our 120 hearings relate to letters to the editor. Like our common law, these cases tend to reinforce and build upon each other. They could – and should – be incorporated into a detailed code of ethics which would cover much more territory and give more guidance than generalized statements of principle promulgated by journalistic societies. Arguments against a news council 1. "Unconstitutional burden on the free press." Rubbish. Our First Amendment instructs government to keep its hands off the press. It says nothing about peer review. 2. "You’re not qualified to judge our ethics." The fundamental principles of good journalism are few and can be understood and transmitted. They are the same principles that relate to fair dealing in our society: be as truthful as you can, tell the whole truth, be fair, avoid conflict of interest. I have never heard a complaint that is too complex for a non-journalist to grasp. 3. "You have no power, no authority." We have learned that the power of public opinion– which the media freely and properly applies to the public – is a surprisingly effective sanction when applied to the media itself. 4. "It could devolve into a media-bashing organization." Yes, it could, if the news organizations neglected it. If you or your organization are interested in the news council concept for your state (or your country), we would be happy to help. Simply contact the news council via e-mail or telephone us at (612) 341-9357.