Tri-Cities news veteran working to rebuild trust in news media

Rufus Friday has a difficult but extremely important job.

The longtime newspaper executive was recently hired to lead an organization that aims to restore trust in the news media.

In today’s environment, that’s a bit like trying to clear a minefield while bombs are dropping and bullets are flying from the right and left.

But Friday is undaunted and the Center for Integrity in News Reporting is, I think, taking a smart approach.

While other organizations are responding to the profoundly un-American assault on the free press by the current federal government, the center is focused on bolstering the news industry’s standards.

These standards, including impartiality, objectivity and fairness in reporting, differentiate professional journalism from the array of digital media and opinions permeating our culture and lives nowadays.

The center is urging news organizations to adopt newsroom standards, if they haven’t already, and make sure they are seen and heard by viewers, readers and listeners.

This won’t resolve ongoing debates within academia and parts of the industry about standards like objectivity. But it could help the public better understand where individual news organizations stand and what they strive to deliver.

Pew Research Center recently found the majority of Americans continue to trust information from national and local news organizations, especially local ones.

But increasingly, they also trust news from social media sites that don’t have similar standards.

A Pew survey released in October found 52% of those aged 18 to 29 have a lot or some trust in information from social media, compared to 56% that trust national media.

Whether they are seeing professional journalism via social media, or trusting whatever comes across the newsfeed, is unclear. But it suggests that fewer appreciate the importance of journalism standards, and the industry will have an even harder time selling subscriptions if the trends continue.

Friday is now based in Kentucky, where he was publisher of the Lexington Herald-Leader until 2018. From 2005 to 2011 he was publisher of the Tri-City Herald and maintains ties to Washington state.

The center was started by Walter Hussman Jr., the former publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and now chairman of WEHCO Media, a group that includes multiple newspapers plus magazines and cable TV and broadband companies.

Hussman has been an outspoken defender of newsroom standards. That led to a 2021 clash over hiring at his alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where the journalism school bears his name.

An organization like the Center for Integrity in News Reporting seems like a good vehicle to pursue this mission. It should complement other groups working on news trust and integrity and the work of nonprofits funding different approaches to news, including partisan outlets with less traditional standards.

“Walter is kind of an individual that goes against the grain and he knows that it’s an uphill battle, and there’s a lot of detractors, saying there’s no way you’re going to be able to regain the public trust in media again,” Friday said. “But he wanted to do his best to give it a try and I wanted to come alongside and try to help as well.”

Hussman told me his concerns grew starting around 2017.

“I could see this was really becoming a problem, a problem for our newspapers as well,” he said.

“Of course, no one can be objective, as Walter Lippmann said over 100 years ago,” Hussman said. “But the idea was the objective method of reporting, getting both sides, or all sides, approaching the story with a humility that maybe you don’t know all the answers before you start.”

At WEHCO, Hussman drafted a short statement of core values that runs every day on page two of his company’s newspapers.

“As soon as we started doing it, I started hearing from people: ‘Thank you for telling us what your journalistic standards are, now we know how to hold you accountable,'” he said.

The center is taking several approaches to rebuild trust.

One is to highlight and reward journalists doing good work, through an annual awards program that began last year. The center offers $25,000 prizes for “excellence in impartial, objective and fair journalism.”

Another is to help bring distinguished journalists to journalism schools to give lectures and teach classes explaining how to report news “impartially and without fear or favor,” Friday said.

The center won’t be a critic — there are plenty of other media critics, Hussman said. It’s also working to change the industry from within, so its trustees and staff have all worked in the business, he said.

Friday is also traveling the country to meet with leaders of news organizations. He’s encouraging them to adopt a statement of their core journalism values “and more importantly, to display them so that readers and viewers and listeners know what those core values are,” he said.

The center is simultaneously fundraising, after raising about $1.5 million so far, and looking for a university to partner with and locate the organization.

There’s more at stake than just the news industry and Hussman’s legacy.

“If Americans can’t trust reporting to give them the facts,” he said, “we’re in big trouble trying to have a democracy.”