About
News Features on the News Council
Our Mission
The mission of the Minnesota News Council is to promote fair, vigorous and trusted journalism by creating a forum where the public and the news media can engage each other in examining standards of fairness.
The Minnesota News Council’s mission is to promote fairness in the news media by helping the public to hold news outlets accountable for the stories they produce. The tenets of fairness, balance and accuracy are considered essential to good journalism. But these standards are not always defined in the same way by journalists and by the public. The News Council exists to open a productive dialogue between the public and the media on the standards the media upholds. One way we do this is by holding public hearings on unresolved individual complaints about news coverage.
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 (now the Press Complaints Commission) in London. Gerald was impressed with its ability to resolve complaints and to restore public trust, and he came back urging the Minnesota Newspaper 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.
We believe that:
-a healthy democracy requires a fair, vigorous and trusted media;
-the public benefits when news outlets help them hold societal institutions accountable
-the news media benefit from being held accountable
-interaction between the public and the news media demystifies journalistic practices, creates mutual -understanding and promotes trust;
-public discussion addresses and promotes media fairness more effectively than do the courts.
We believe that in order for the News Council to maintain its impartiality, the Council must remain independent of government and must seek and sustain broad-based financial support.
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@news-council.org