June 24th, 2008
Newsworthy Online | June 2008
Volume 2: Issue 6
Inside this issue:
I. News Council Upholds Complaints Against KBJR-TV, KSTP-TV
II. “Journalism that Matters” comes to the Twin Cities
Posts Tagged ‘History’
June 24th, 2008
Featured Article: “The Minnesota News Council: The Story Behind the Creation”
In 1993, Dr. Louise Williams Hermanson, a University of Minnesota alum and communications professor at the University of South Alabama, published “The Minnesota News Council: The Story Behind the Creation” in the Oral History Review. The article draws on interviews with founding members of the Minnesota News Council to illustrate the twists and turns of creating one of the nation’s most enduring efforts at media accountability.
Excerpt
Phil Duff, editor of the Red Wing Republican Eagle, mused on the initial skepticism he noticed among his peers: “ [In] dealing with newspaper people who are kind of alarmed about the council on a theoretical basis, I respond, ‘Why should we be?’ If the press council does make a finding against you and you publish a story about it in your newspaper, as you are obligated to do, what’s so terrible about that? If you still think you are right, write your editorial and say you are right. It is no worse than having somebody write a critical letter which you publish. You live with that—that’s not the end of the world—and then you go on.
The other thing is that I think the press council really is an educational device. I think it helped me be a little better thinker about the work I do and what is right and what is wrong about the newspaper’s actions. I should think it would help other people think the same way. It can’t help but have that same effect on members of the public to help them get close to a particular issue and to be more understanding of a newspaper’s view and of its fallibility—a kind of inherent and necessary fallibility.”