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Defending the trust box in an era of mistrust
Trust. As I write this, I am just 4 months away from entering my fifth decade in medical publishing. Let us just say, I have seen some stuff. I am proud to say that one thing that has not changed is our commitment to earning our audience’s trust.
High-level ethics were a given when I was an editorial assistant for Peg Carnine, RN, editorial director Donna Carpenter, and owner Charles B. Slack. It remains so today under Healio chief content officer Joan-Marie Stiglich, ELS, SLACK Journals and Books senior vice president Stephanie Arasim Portnoy, and owner Peter Slack.
What has changed is the number and variety of ways that trust can be eroded. When we look back on the second decade of the 21st century, things like fake news, general data protection regulation (GDPR), data mining, Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon (GAFA) and content marketing will loom large in the rear view mirror. Each bears its own set of challenges and trust issues.
As we build the News section of Healio Version 5.0, trust is very much on our minds. So much so that it occupies a prominent position in our vision statement: “Respect their time. Earn their trust. Give them what they want.”
We believe a trustworthy, independent voice in medical publishing is vitally important, perhaps more so than ever. We know trust is important to our audience — user testing confirms this — and they select and judge the sites they use and the content they engage with based in no small part on how much they trust the source. It’s no surprise then that when I asked Joan-Marie for her first guest post she chose trust as her topic. From where I sit, the more trust comes under assault the more important it is for us to talk about. Often. Thanks, JM for starting the discussion.
- John C. Carter
Chief Operating Officer, The Wyanoke Group
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-c-carter-a42aba11/
Twitter: @JohnCCarter
Trust, accuracy, integrity will slay the dragon of ‘fake news’
Journalism is a noble profession. Journalism is the Fourth Estate. It is the checks and balance of a democracy. It is rationale vs. rationalizing. It is ethics and credibility. This is what I was taught in my journalism classes eons ago. However, the perception of journalism has changed dramatically.
Skepticism of content and journalism now runs deep in today’s society.
Long before the term “fake news” was coined, the sentiment began. Content was once the ecosystem of journalists and professional writers. But as the internet grew and the ability to easily put content onto the internet grew, the number of content creators increased exponentially. And, well, not all content creators were equal or motivated by the same things journalists and professional writers were.
While journalists and professional writers still like to pay their rent, brunch with friends and use their own Netflix account instead of stealing their friend’s mom’s password, they are not motivated by money in that they write in a certain way to be paid.
Suddenly, we had influencers and content marketers and Twitter and Buzzfeed. But then, there quieter departures from the hallowed halls of journalists and professional writers whose DNA was ethics, facts and balance. The internet became flooded by content masquerading as balanced.
Fake news took a little longer to get to medical journalism. As medical journalists, facts, data and P values were indisputable, right? Not so fast.
We at Healio started seeing it on sites that looked like us. Less scrupulous advertisers started demanding it.
We at Healio take pride in our adherence to the Society of Professional Journalists (SJP) Code of Ethics. SJP member-journalists must “never plagiarize”; “acknowledge mistakes and correct them promptly and prominently”; and “take responsibility for accuracy of their work.”
Then it knocked on our door: our first article comment that referenced “fake news” and an accusation that we were reporting disinformation.
Whoa, not us. But I verified and responded to the commenter. Wipes brow. Not us.
But other accusations crossed my desk, because while medicine is data, we live in an era where the integrity of journalism is under attack.
So, then why is the Healio way different?
I have been at Healio (formerly known as SLACK Incorporated) for 25 years. Here we have baked into our corporate values a division of Sales and Editorial that feels a lot like the division of Church and State.
The tenets of the Healio medical news are simple:
- Be relevant;
- Be balanced;
- Be meaningful;
- Bring value;
- Hustle;
- Be clear from where our reporting came; and
- It is better to be second and right than first and wrong (but strive to be first and right).
I have often bragged that I have never been told to write something or not write something. I have heard Peter Slack or John Carter in person (or relayed to me) on more than one occasion say that final content decisions lie with me. That is a powerful stance for a company for which more than one revenue stream is advertising. The buck stops at the highest-ranking content person.
I was recently at a professional conference and heard Scott Stratten, host of the UNPODCAST, speak. He discussed the responsibility of putting content on the internet and the importance of trust between you and your reader or content consumer.
“If you break that trust, [the web] is less relevant,” Stratten said. “When you break your integrity, you should no longer do your job.”
Amen, Scott. Amen.
We know trust is essential to Healio readers – it was a central theme in recent focus groups. Those concerns have resulted in the creation of a “trust box” that will appear at the top of each Healio article.
It is essential for a reader to trust you – the content creator, the journalist and the professional writer. The only way to achieve trust is to return every unbalanced story that crosses your desk back to the writer; to investigate any accusation of unbalance; to ensure accuracy; and to write the less popular stories. – by Joan-Marie Stiglich, ELS
Reference:
Stratten S. Keynote – Everything has changed and nothing is different. Presented at: Content Marketing World 2019. Cleveland; Sept. 3-6, 2019.
Disclosure s : Carter is Chief Operating Officer of The Wyanoke Group®. Healio®, Healio® Strategic Solutions, Healio® Live and SLACK® Incorporated are wholly owned subsidiaries of The Wyanoke Group®. He has been a SLACK® Incorporated or Wyanoke Group employee since 1982. Along the way he has worked as editor, writer, marketer, product and project developer and manager. Stiglich is the Chief Content Officer of Healio®. She is a 25-year veteran of medical publishing and has been a Healio® employee for the duration of her career.