Posted September 23, 2003   —    www.gradethenews.org       

First-semester 2003 grades
Quality gap between newspapers and local television newscasts widens in Bay Area
Analysis by John McManus

Focusing on the Iraq war and California’s budget crisis, the Bay Area’s three largest newspapers achieved top scores during the first half of 2003 on seven basic yardsticks of sound journalism. But even such compelling issues couldn’t lift the five most watched local television stations from mediocrity.

From January to July, five researchers at Grade the News, a watchdog group affiliated with Stanford’s Graduate Program in Journalism, matched more than 2,200 stories in newscasts and newspapers to core news standards derived from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.

At least on those basics, the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times rated in the same category as the prestigious Washington Post, which was used as a reference standard. All four papers merited an overall grade of A.

By contrast, grades for KTVU Channel 2, KRON Channel 4, KPIX Channel 5, KGO Channel 7, and KNTV Channel 11 ranged from C+ to D+.

Compared with Grade the News’ last analysis in 2000, the new study found newspapers improving, but television stagnating. Three years ago Channel 2 in Oakland competed with the best local newspapers. Not this time.

Core quality ratings of the Bay Area’s most popular news media
(See below for explanations, examples and scores for each news organization.)

Measuring only the basics

The study did not address fundamentally important, but difficult-to-quantify, measures of news quality. So we did not consider the intelligence of writing or reporting, whether specific important stories such as a robust debate on U.S. policy in Iraq were underplayed or ignored and the quality of photos and videography.

Rather, we looked at the basic structure of news, such as the importance of the topics chosen, the level of context, the potential of a story for wide impact on local residents and fairness. We are not saying local papers match the overall excellence of the Post, only that they did as well on those basics of journalism amenable to counting.

Making the competition more equal

To level the field between print and broadcast, our research team ignored the volume advantage of newspapers. We analyzed only the top stories of the day — those on the front and local news front pages of newspapers, and the first 30 minutes of the evening newscasts, alternating between early and late. Research shows these are the most read and watched parts of the news. Grades are based on the percentage of news time or space each medium devoted to various types of stories.

Another plus for newspapers is that readers can skip over long stories if they’re not interested. But viewers either have to sit through a long story or click their remote control to see what’s on elsewhere. When they do they may not return, penalizing the station for boring them.

To reduce print’s advantage, we capped the number of sources we counted at levels compatible with the brevity of newscast stories. We also combined closely related stories, sometimes labeled “team reporting,” into one. That allowed us to add sources and award higher scores in several categories. Grading by time rather than story meant a well-reported longer story received more credit than a throw-away 30-second report.

We sampled all media on the same news-gathering cycle — evening newscasts and the next morning’s paper — so all had the same raw material.

A different approach to news

Despite these adjustments, the differences between print and television were glaring:

• The Bay Area is extraordinarily diverse in all sorts of ways, giving birth to multiple perspectives on any issue. Yet stories with only one named source — or none at all — comprised 35% of the airtime during the top half-hour of news at the stations sampled. Often the single source was a police officer. In contrast, stories taking only 9% of newspaper column space on the front pages had fewer than two sources.

• Stories devoted to helping citizens keep track of government decisions were given nearly twice the emphasis in newspapers as in television — 47% of newspaper column inches versus 25% of television airtime. These weren’t just “meeting” stories, but also those that tracked the effect of decision-making at all levels. Students and teachers’ fates lies with school boards; bus riders are affected by transportation authorities; doctors, patients and university students all feel the cuts in state funding.

• Television newsrooms relied heavily on “spot” news, much of it generated from listening to scanner radios for mayhem, fires and collisions rather than setting their own news agendas or examining pressing public concerns. The study found that on average, only 14% of airtime was devoted to issue stories initiated by the journalists themselves. In contrast, 46% of newspaper space was devoted to these “enterprise” or investigative reports.

• Even elemental fairness — getting both sides of controversies — was hit and miss: No station rated above a C+ on that measure except KGO Channel 7, which earned a B+. The newspapers averaged B+.

Nevertheless, at every station there were also more than a few stories which scored at the top of our categories. When it commits the resources, local television news was excellent.

News directors respond

Several news directors challenged the validity of the analysis. Kevin Keeshan, news director at KGO Channel 7, said taking the first 30 minutes of the 6 p.m. newscast missed his station’s investigative efforts and some in-depth reporting that appear in the second half of the show. “I hit some of those [quality measures] harder in the second half-hour than the first,” he said. He suggested sampling the entire hour: “It would be a more realistic evaluation of what we do, and it would have to improve our grades.”

Ed Chapuis, news director at KTVU Channel 2 agreed: “By eliminating the [second] half of KTVU's 10 o'clock newscast, you are excluding our award-winning ‘Segment 2’ reports, which are designed to provide depth and context on serious subjects.”

Grade the News previously analyzed full hour-long newscasts. But news directors then complained that comparing only the top print stories with all of the television stories was unfair. While we remain open to change for future analyses, evaluating the second half might actually lower the stations’ grades. The additional in-depth or investigative story would help, but the concentration of lower-scoring sports and light features in the back half of the typical newscast would hurt.

The executive of the overall lowest-scoring station rejected the whole idea of analyzing newspapers and newscasts together. “You can’t compare a newspaper to a TV newscast,” said Jim Sanders, vice president for news and operations at KNTV Channel 11 in San Jose. “It’s like comparing the Celtics with the Red Sox.”

Douglas Foster, who teaches at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and has worked in both broadcast and print news, disagreed: “For so many years, local television journalists have been defending the value of their role in news. If you want to argue for the value of broadcast news you have to hold it to similar standards.” Foster serves on Grade the News’ journalism advisory board, which is composed of Bay Area journalists. He took no part in the study.

Venise Wagner, an assistant professor at San Francisco State University’s Department of Journalism, said the basic rules of journalism are the same for both media: “The advantage of television, of course, is its immediacy, but that does not preclude it from giving viewers complete news. What I see happening in my unscientific observations is that local television news tends to devote much of its minutes to the most sensational of stories while providing little context into larger issues. We hear so many stories about crime in Oakland, but what about the stories of what people are doing about crime in Oakland? What about the reasons behind increased crime in Oakland?”

The fine print

The study sampled stories every sixth day, so it included roughly equal numbers of fat Sunday and slim Monday papers, lighter Saturday and weightier weekday newscasts. The margin of error of all our measures is approximately plus or minus 5 percentage points, about half a grade.

We also examined a random subsample of the stories to be sure two evaluators, acting independently, scored each item similarly. Agreement between analysts ranged from 100% to 76%. Only one of our 12 measures fell below 80% agreement, the accepted level for scholarly publication. It categorized specific story topic, a measure that wasn’t used in grading.

Seven yardsticks of basic news quality

• Newsworthiness: Core topics, such as crime, weather, government, politics, education, economics and health, get more points than peripheral topics such as celebrity news, fender-benders and sports. Stories affecting many people score higher than those affecting just a few. Stories can score from 1 to 4 points and are weighted by the proportion of the newscast or newspaper display pages they occupy. If 88% or more of the space goes to core topics affecting more than a few (> 10,000 people in a region of 7 million), the news organization rates a grade of A.

• Context: Number of sources. Four sources, including documents and “declined comment” rate an A. Only two independent expert sources also rate an A.

• Explanation: Stories about issues or thematic treatment of events have more explanatory power and receive more credit than stories focused only on a particular event such as a fire or homicide. If 70% or more of the top stories concern issues (including meetings, policies, etc.) or patterns of events, an A is assigned.

• Local Relevance: Stories about what happens in the Bay Area, or localized for the Bay Area, and stories affecting the whole state rate better than stories from out of town. To allow for important news from Iraq and elsewhere, up to 35 percent of the news can be from afar without jeopardizing an A.

• Civic contribution: Stories about how government or politics work or affect people at any level from school board to Washington are counted. So are stories of people criticizing or protesting government actions. Forty percent or more of the space or time devoted to such stories rates an A.

• Enterprise: Stories initiated by journalists seeking answers to pressing public questions rate higher than stories initiated by press releases and conferences or listening to scanner radio reports of accidents and violent incidents. Investigative reporting merits special consideration and is weighted by a factor of 4. Forty percent or more of top story space or time devoted to enterprise or investigative reporting rates an A.

• Fairness: This applies only to locally produced stories that involve some type of controversy or accusation of wrongdoing. If the other side is offered an opportunity to speak (even if that opportunity is rejected) that counts as fair. Eighty-five percent of content rated fair earns an A.

Overall grade: Because of its central importance, the newsworthiness index is counted twice toward the total. All others are counted once. The result is figured on a 4-point scale, like a school grade.

The GTN research team comprised Michael Stoll, associate director of the project; Magdalena Wojcieszak an intern visiting from Poland; Seeta Peña Ganghadaran and Lise Marken, Stanford doctoral students; and John McManus, the project director.

Measuring Newsworthiness

On Easter Sunday evening while a few jellybeans still lurked under the plastic grass of Easter baskets, Bay Area residents who tuned in to NBC 11 for news saw accused murderer Scott Peterson’s parents angrily defend him. Then the tears of throngs mourning his pregnant wife. Followed by the discovery of a San Jose girl’s body. Then the funeral of a slain Pittsburg police officer. Followed by “not guilty” pleas from three people charged with torture and murder. And finally, before the first commercial break, a Fremont boy attacked by a pit bull.

It wasn’t just NBC 11.

Channel 2 in Oakland launched its newscast with Scott Peterson languishing in jail, the San Jose girl’s body and the policeman’s funeral. Channels 5 and 7 both led with Scott’s parents and Laci’s memorial, the girls’ body and the pit bull attack. Channel 4 began with the Petersons, passing mention of an investigation of abuse at the Santa Clara County juvenile hall, the girl’s body and a CNN story about a man on the East Coast abducting his niece.

Each of these stories evoked fear or sadness. But they provided little for Bay Area residents trying to make sense of the pressing issues of an extraordinary time for the nation, the state and the region — the purpose of journalism, according to ethical codes like that of the Society of Professional Journalists.

To be sure, the next morning’s San Francisco Chronicle played the Peterson story prominently. But the other top local stories explored patronage in the state assembly, why another slain mom who happened to be Latina and poor got so little media attention, the new Millbrae BART station connecting with Caltrain and the airport, and the new clout of Bay Area renters. While one or another of the episodes of mayhem described above made the display pages that morning in the Contra Costa Times and San Jose Mercury News, the mix of top stories skewed more toward issues than isolated events than any of the newscasts the previous evening.

Newsworthiness Index

Quantifying newsworthiness may seem as hopeless as nailing Jell-O to a wall. But we relied on two assumptions — on average:

1) Some story topics, such as government, crime, weather, environment, economics, education, health, transportation, etc., advance the purpose of news more than others — celebrity couplings and break-ups, fender-benders and sports. Even if many are interested, whether Barry Bonds hits a homer or the ’Niners or Raiders win is less likely to affect the quality of our lives over the long run than the state budget crisis, who — if anyone — replaces Gov. Gray Davis, or even a school board’s decision to cut teachers and enlarge class sizes.

2) Stories with the potential to affect large numbers in a significant and non-transient way are more valuable than stories with only brief impact or consequence for just a few.

Core topics — virtually all but celebrities, human interest, sports and minor mishaps — rated 2 points while the peripheral topics just mentioned got 1 point.

Stories with wide impact rated 2 points, narrow impact 1 point. With seven million residents, the odds are good that tragedy will strike someone in the Bay Area every day. While that accident, shooting, fire, rape or abduction will have incalculable impact on the family and friends, perhaps even the entire neighborhood of the victim, for most of us the effect is likely only to be sympathy.

We set the threshold for wide impact at 10,000 people or more. That may sound like a lot. But it’s less than a fifth of 1% of local residents — about the population of the smallest Bay Area city. We chose 10,000 to give full credit for any story affecting an entire municipality or even a moderate-sized school district.

Grades are computed for each story by multiplying topic by impact rating.

We recognize that news is a business and stories that are merely interesting may deserve prominent display to sell the newscast or newspaper. So we set grades to allow a station or newspaper to spend up to 15% of its most valuable time or space on the lowest-scoring stories and still earn an A.

Letter grades for each news department are as follows: A perfect score would require all top stories to be core and have wide impact. But 88% or more space or time devoted to such stories merits an A; 85-89% receives a B+; 80-84% rates a B: etc.

Because this index underlies all of the rest, we count it twice in computing the overall grade. No matter how fully-sourced, local, fair, well-explained or enterprising a story might be, if the topic is peripheral and few people are affected in a significant way, the story is unlikely to maximize public understanding of current issues and events.

Measuring Context

Fifty years ago two social scientists discovered how vastly the perceptions of a simple college football game differed between fans of the two teams. The differences were so great, the scientists concluded, that partisans of Dartmouth and Princeton actually saw two different games. They paid attention, for example, to the rough play of the other team, but didn’t notice their own team’s infractions.

If people differ in their perception of an event as well defined as a game, played in broad daylight, in which everyone has a clear view and no other purpose at the moment, how much more will views diverge for news? What becomes news is complex; it describes life. And reporters are rarely there to record it firsthand.

Issues as complicated as the California budget crisis, the killing spree in Oakland and the gubernatorial recall, cannot be reduced to a single point of view. Yet local stations routinely did so. In our sample, stories with one or no source at all, comprised more than a third of airtime. In comparison, newspapers with fewer than two sources took up only 9% of measured column inches.

Context Index

Contributing to television’s scarcity of sources is the tendency of stations to offer no sources for weather reports, and — despite the relative constancy of Bay Area weather — to devote more time to weather than almost any other topic. One might argue that weather segments need not be densely sourced. So we examined how station context scores would change if weather forecasts were eliminated from the analysis.

If we had excluded weather, context grades for television would have improved slightly. In our sample, which does include weather, 22% of time was taken up by stories with no sources. Setting weather stories aside, that time would drop to 11% — still more than three times as much unattributed reporting as in newspapers.

Excluding forecasts would only increase the average television context grade from a D+ to a C. The largest change would be at KGO, whose context grade would rise from a D to a C+. That would raise Channel 7’s overall grade from a C to a C+. The effect on other stations would not change their overall grades.

How the index was constructed

This measure is based on the number and quality of sources in a story. Up to 150 points are assigned as follows: 40 for each named independent expert source, up to a total of 3 sources; 20 for each specific source, up to a total of 5 sources.

Caps on number of sources counted are designed to level the competition between print and television. A lengthy newspaper story with 20 named sources gets no more points than one with 5. Likewise, no story can earn more than 150 points.

Sources may be persons or documents. They may be quoted directly or paraphrased. They need not be on air. A specific source must be a particular person, never plural. He or she may be anonymous only if expressly granted anonymity in the report. Sources who refuse comment are counted just the same as those who are quoted.

Because stories vary in how many sources they need, stories with more than 100 points can make up for those with less. We estimated that the top stories of the day should average more than two identified non-expert sources.

To merit an A, a news organization needed to average 80 points or above. We assigned a B+ for averages between 75-79 points, a B between 70-74 points, etc.

Measuring Explanation

On March 26, KPIX Channel 5 ran a 26-second story on two would-be robbers who made a serious miscalculation. They attempted to rip off a gun store in El Cerrito, but were shot at by the owner instead. A boy outside a store across the street was injured by a stray bullet in the shootout.

The story accurately recorded the “what,” but the “why” and “so what” were ignored. It was just another hard-luck story going down.

A little after our sample period ended, on Aug. 25, Channel 5 took a much more useful approach. It reported on a weekend of violence in Oakland — seven incidents over three days. The report included a map showing the locations of the violent episodes and quoted Mayor Jerry Brown, who criticized the state probation department for a serious failure to supervise former inmates. A story that began focused on the face of a weeping widow closed as a thematic policy debate that proposed solutions to larger problems that affected thousands of people.

It’s cheaper and easier to fill a newspaper or newscast with reports of seemingly random violence than to treat a problem as an issue. All the sources necessary to harvest the tragedy are at the scene. A reporter can complete the story in several hours. And the heartbreak will draw readers or viewers across the region.

But such reporting leaves us only afraid, not informed of causes, effects and possible solutions. Such reporting cultivates a sense that nothing can be done.

Researchers have learned that news viewers and readers gain much more insight from issue and thematic reporting than from an episodic approach.

Explanation Index

How we constructed the measure

We looked at the percentage of news time or space devoted to stories about issues or events treated thematically — looking for patterns, causes or solutions. Since some simple events merit top billing, we set the grading standard loosely: If 70% or more of the top stories were about issues (including meetings, laws, etc.) or events treated thematically, an A was awarded. 65-69% earns a B+; 60-65% earns a B, etc.

Measuring Local Relevance

Proximity is a core news value. Generally, the nearer some event or issue strikes to home, the more impact it has on our lives.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan constitute obvious exceptions; our soldiers and tax dollars are on the line. What happens around the world can affect us very directly, as we learned so tragically on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Bay Area’s large immigrant population also makes news from abroad more important than it might be in the American heartland.

The value of proximity is also diminished by the global economy. Corporations are shifting jobs and investment dollars across national borders with powerful effects on employment and standards of living.

So this year, we reduced our expectations for how much of the news disseminated by local news departments ought to be about the 11-county Bay Area or directly related to it through localization of a story from elsewhere, such as a new provision passed by the Legislature in Sacramento.

Two local television stations, KRON Channel 4 and KTVU Channel 2, as well as the newspapers have no network broadcasts on which they can depend to provide national and international news. By contrast, KGO Channel 7 can rely on ABC’s Peter Jennings, KPIX Channel 5 can rely on Dan Rather, and KNTV Channel 11 can expect Tom Brokaw to deliver news from the wider world adjacent to their early evening newscasts.

Even for stations with network news, we increased allowances non-local content from our 2000 survey, not just because of the war, but because this year we sampled early and late newscasts. Producers of 11 p.m. newscasts cannot assume viewers saw a network newscast hours earlier. It’s also true that not everyone is home to see network newscasts, because most local stations schedule them before 6:30 p.m.

So we created two standards, one for the newspapers and stations without a network program to provide national and international news, and one for those with such newscasts.

Without network newscast
• 65% or more Bay Area or related earns an A; 60-64% earns a B+; 55-59% earns a B, etc.

With network newscast
•75% or more earns an A; 70-74% earns a B+; 65-69% earns a B, etc.

Local Relevance Index

Measuring Civic Contribution

A bold headline spanning all six columns of the front page of the Contra Costa Times on July 17 proclaimed “Contractors face end of road,” a reference to one possible outcome of California’s budget crisis: that 600 highway projects could halt if contractors walked off the job.

It was a huge story that affected potentially millions of commuters around the state, and the Times got the scoop. But it was also a complex story about government, something television producers are likely to describe as a MEGO — “my eyes glaze over.”

In the same news cycle, the evening before, KPIX Channel 5, gave the budget only eight seconds. The station had a different strategy about how to capture those eyeballs, leading the 11 p.m. news with a partly-live report from the scene of a bloody car crash at a Santa Monica farmer’s market that left 10 dead and scores injured. The southern California accident story ran more than two minutes.

While the tragic crash was a legitimate top story, so was the budget crisis. And the latter has had far greater impact on the residents of the Bay Area.

Government and political stories need not be dry tomes. The Times story focused not on the bureaucratic infighting between Caltrans and its governing board, but on the bottom line for taxpayers and drivers: $100 million more per month to keep contractors from taking on other projects, and delays in needed safety repairs.

Civic Contribution Index

How the index was constructed

We measured reporting on the actions of those at the controls of our government at all levels, including discussion or protest concerning those people or their policies.

To allow reporters to file stories from the places where policies strike people’s lives, we counted the percentage of time or space taken by all stories in which one-quarter or more of the story described politics, actions (related to public business) or deliberations of government supervisory or regulatory or lawmaking boards or bodies, elected officials or the heads of any agencies of the U.S., state or local governments. We included studies (conducted by government or outsiders) of effectiveness or problems of arms of domestic government and their policies.

We excluded actions of governments outside the U.S.

Journalism ethics asks for constant scrutiny of how our government is behaving. So such stories ought to be a mainstay of coverage. However, they need not consume the majority of news space or time even for the day’s top stories.

The grading standard is as follows: 40% or more for an A; 35-39% for a B+; 30-34% for a B; etc.

Measuring Enterprise

We measured the proactivity of the newsroom, its willingness to seek out answers to the public’s questions rather than simply react to events or others’ agendas

In the aftermath of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Robert Collier, who apparently disdains taking dictation from military authorities, ventured out on his own. He scrambled through the debris left by American bombs to see if he could find anything interesting to write about.

He did, repeatedly. In one story in our sample, on April 21, Collier dissected Iraq’s spy agency. On his own, he entered the partially collapsed headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Saddam Hussein’s intelligence service. He sifted through thousands of scraps of paper describing bugs placed in the U.S. embassy before the first Gulf War, and spy missions to Pakistan, Russia, France, Zimbabwe, Iran, China, Malaysia, Japan, Britain, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Sudan and Germany. It was a quick investigation, to be sure, but one that put some flesh on the kinds of skeletal and formulaic post-war stories that many foreign correspondents were banging out “over there.”

Say what you like about the Chronicle’s war coverage, but don’t call it purely reactive. The paper sent Mr. Collier, staff writers John Koopman and Anna Badkhen, and several free-lance writers to Iraq to look for new angles on the conflict. They often succeeded in showing the effects of the war and its aftermath in startling and unique detail.

Not every news organization in the Bay Area shined during the war. Most television stations merely ran repackaged network feeds they quickly disassembled, reassembled and then narrated, with little or no independent reporting. On occasion they attempted to make it appear as if a reporter was working for them. But every time we saw television journalists identify themselves on air as representatives of Bay Area stations, they turned out to be correspondents working for the networks or sister stations instead.

For many stations, the war represented a temptation to go for the most recent news, live if possible, without much effort to dig deeper and seek out a bigger story. Issue-based stories initiated by journalists themselves, either “enterprise” reporting or the more time-intensive genre of investigative reporting, help readers and viewers make sense of the world by presenting a story that’s more than just the snapshot of the events of the last 24 hours.

Enterprise Index

How the measure was constructed

We analyzed only stories produced by local news organizations, passing over stories provided by networks or wire services. We divided stories into categories based on how much initiative the newsroom showed.

At the passive end, we classified information typically learned from press releases or listening to the emergency “scanner” radio. In newsrooms this is called “spot” news — coverage of events occurring during the last 24 hours that are typically terse and focused on the basic elements of an event. While valuable, such reporting sometimes lets people outside the newsroom set the news agenda, those with deep enough pockets to arrange events.

At the active end, we identified enterprise reports — coverage decided upon in the newsroom. It usually takes a longer view than the past news cycle and often offers perspectives that are unique in the region.

No type of enterprise reporting demands more newsroom resources than the investigative story. Because the watchdog function of journalism is so important, time or space spent on investigative reports is weighted by a factor of 4. In other words, a three-minute investigative story is treated as if it lasted 12 minutes.

Even a news department well funded enough to develop enterprise stories must cover the top breaking news of the day. For that reason, enterprise rarely constitutes more than half of the top stories. The grading standard allows plenty of room for breaking news, while rewarding the big-picture reporting that journalists originate to tie events into comprehensible patterns.

Grading follows the same standard as the Civic Contribution Index: 40% or more rates an A; 35-39% rates a B+; 30-34% earns a B, etc.

Measuring Fairness

On May 27, KRON Channel 4 aired a report on the 6 p.m. news telling the story of unrest at a Memorial Day festival in an Oakland park.

The event got unruly, two named police officers standing in front of headquarters declared on camera, because the people whom they were trying to arrest didn’t respect authority. After more than two minutes of the police description of a “sideshow,” an unidentified man was given two seconds to say merely, “There was no sideshow going on.”

Obviously, the perspective of the police was not the only one available, but the station judged that two seconds of anonymous response was enough. There were thousands of people at the festival, as was evident from video from that night. Their views might have enriched the story, or possibly even shed light on tensions the Oakland police are experiencing with the community.

Our study turned up dozens of examples of unfair or one-sided reporting between January and July. That includes many named criminal suspects who were given no chance to respond to the charges against them.

One example: On May 9, KGO Channel 7 ran a report on a Sean Viehweg, suspected of killing his high school friend 13 years ago. The reporter concluded that Viehweg gave himsef up to authorities because he “may be tired of running.” A police lieutenant said: “It seemed to me that his past had caught up with him, and it was time, and that he needed to — he needed to start the healing process for what occurred.”

The report strongly suggested Viehweg was guilty. Yet it only quoted his accusers — there was no response from him, his lawyer, his family or anyone else who could speak on his behalf.
That might make for more compelling television, but it overlooks the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, which enjoins journalists to “diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to respond to allegations of wrongdoing.”

We asked our advisory board of local journalists whether it was practical to seek comment from those recently arrested. Eight of nine said the attempt should be made. As Raul Ramirez, news director at KQED explained: “The fact is that journalists who make an effort to get ‘the other side’ under those circumstances often get a curt ‘no comment.’ But, occasionally, they are rewarded with insights and angles that make their stories richer and, certainly, better balanced.”

On television, stories in which one side in a controversy or someone accused of malfeasance or neglect was not given a chance to respond took up a troubling 31% of airtime. In another 11%, those subjects were allowed to respond, but unequally. Compare that with newspapers: Only 8% were graded as blatantly unfair. In another 11%, sides were provided unequal opportunity to respond.

Jaxon Van Derbeken of the San Francisco Chronicle provided an example of going the extra mile for fairness. In his March 27 story, “Plot against police brass, lawyers say,” Mr. Van Derbeken sought comment from all six officers accused of conspiring in a cover-up.

Fairness Index

How we constructed the measure

We added up the percentage of time or space consumed by controversial stories in which more than one side was given the opportunity to make its case (even if that opportunity was rejected).

Stories without controversy or allegations of wrongdoing were excluded from the analysis, as were those produced outside the local newsroom. Also excluded were stories in which an opposing view would not be available, e.g., a not-yet-apprehended criminal suspect. Finally, opinions offered by columnists about an event or issue were not counted; journalism ethics codes permit them wider berth.

The fairest stories offer competing sides the same opportunities for comment. If one side is quoted directly, so are the others if they choose (and can be reached for comment). If one side is on air, so are the others (unless there is some obvious reason why they cannot be). Neither time nor space must be equal, however. (We seek objectivity of method, but not of result.)

Less fair are stories in which all sides are represented, but not given equal opportunity to respond. One side may be on camera or directly quoted while a reporter paraphrases the other side’s argument. Unfair stories don’t give all obvious sides a chance to comment.

Fairness grades are based on the percentage of news time or space in stories judged completely fair plus one-half the time or space in stories judged partly fair. Grades range from A for 85% or above; B+ for 80-84%; B for 75-79%, … to F, for less than 55%.

News Directors Respond

Ed Chapuis, news director at KTVU Channel 2 responded: "Fairness, localism, civic contributions, enterprise; these are all values that KTVU holds in high regard. It is a shame that your study overlooks KTVU's efforts in these areas."

Jim Sanders, vice president for news at KNTV Channel 11 said local residents' trust in the station speaks louder than an academic evaluation. "NBC 11 has been fortunate in making the grade with those discerning Bay Area viewers — those who give the grades that really matter."

KGO Channel 7 News Director Kevin Keeshan replied: "I was happy to see we scored high in fairness. We take pride in that.”

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