What we’re doing to preserve your trust
Mercury News, East Bay Times join in global effort to provide more transparency and trust in media
Dear Readers,
As journalists, our most important asset is your trust. With it, we can do our jobs, hold the powerful accountable, and deliver a service that’s protected by the Constitution and valued by the community. If you don’t believe us, we can’t serve that vital role.
For decades, our reputation was based on the work we did in more than 150 years of service to Bay Area communities. Today, we face two new challenges: Lies told by the president about what we do and the flourishing of misinformation, often for malicious purposes, in social media.
So The Mercury News and East Bay Times are joining The Trust Project, a global effort based locally at Santa Clara University to increase transparency and trust in media. We, along with more than 120 other news organizations, are adopting a system of “Trust Indicators” on our websites that’s a little bit like nutrition labeling for the news.
The Trust Indicators help you understand who is behind a news source and how it does its work, so you can better distinguish actual journalism from misinformation, propaganda and information designed to sell or incite. The indicators will also be used by Google, Facebook and other platforms to help identify legitimate news sources. If you already read The Mercury News or East Bay Times online or in print, you know our reputation. But for the many new people who read our work online every day, and for your use as you visit other websites, the Trust Indicators will be a valuable help in understanding the various sources of information.
Online you’ll now see a set of links at the bottom of every article. The links make it easy to report an error in a story, understand how we gather news or contact us.
We’ll also add labels above the headline of each story that will help you distinguish what kind of story it is — such as news, backgrounder, analysis or opinion — and see a definition of that story type.
In a world where journalists are subject to repeated criticism along with physical threats and violence, we believe it’s more important than ever to maintain our quality and ensure that we retain your trust. So I’m pleased to introduce The Trust Project and hope you’ll find it useful.