Criteria for Addressable Complaints
The News Council has the following criteria for accepting complaints into its public hearing process:
1. The party bringing the complaint must have been named or clearly alluded to in the story. If a corporation or group is the named party, a responsible person – officer, board member, family member – can act as the complainant.
2. Complaints must address alleged breaches of journalistic fairness, accuracy or ethics of a published or broadcast news story or editorial. Complainants are asked to review the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, or the news outlet’s own code, and to select which tenets of the code they believe apply to their complaint.*
3. The News Council does not accept complaints about non-coverage, business decisions, circulation or advertising.
4. Complaints about letters to the editor are generally not accepted, but may be reviewed by the complaints committee and will be accepted at its discretion.
5. Complaints about editorials or columns must address factual errors or a reckless disregard for the truth. Simply disagreeing with the opinion, or being offended by it, does not constitute a legitimate complaint.
6. The story must have appeared no more than six months before the news organization receives notice of the complaint from either the complainant or the News Council. A complaint received after that will be allowed to proceed only if the complainant has been actively trying to resolve his or her differences with the news outlet during that period.
7. The News Council does not accept complaints of current or past employees of news outlets about the employee-employer relationship, unless that relationship becomes the subject of news coverage and the complaint meets the news Council’s standard acceptance criteria.
8. The News Council considers complaints against news organizations – television and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, wire services and online news outlets, including independent news blogs and blogs affiliated with news organizations. It does not consider complaints against publications or broadcasts that do not purport to be “news.”
9. The News Council reserves the right to reject complaints that fall outside its scope of review, that fail to comply with its procedures, or that are frivolous or made in bad faith.
10. If at any point during the processing of a complaint, information is received that the complaint does not meet the News Council’s criteria, the complaint will be dismissed.
*Referencing the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists is intended only as a guide to complainants trying to specify their grievance. The Minnesota News Council has not formally adopted this or any other journalistic code of ethics.