Richard Sambrook: ‘The values of traditional journalism still matter’

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After years of hype surrounding the rise of social media and the Internet as alternative sources of news and information, a growing number of voices are warning that traditional journalistic standards of objectivity and impartiality are still necessary even in the digital age. One of them is journalism professor and former head of BBC news Richard Sambrook.

In a recent study, Sambrook (@sambrook) writes of serious concerns about the quality and practices of news media. While acknowledging that it is difficult to enforce professional standards in the digital age, he concluded it would be “dangerous” to “disregard such standards”. DW Akademie’s Steffen Leidel discussed these issues and more with Richard Sambrook.

How do you define quality journalism in the digital age?

Of course, it means different things to different people. For some people it is about depth and expertise and specialism. For some people it is about variety. For some people it is about openness and interactivity. So it is a subjective term. But I think one of the trends we are seeing in a digital age is that the old ideas of quality, which were about objective information and impartiality, are beginning to break down. This is because of the huge competition and public access to media space. Therefore I think we need to reinterpret those ideas of impartiality and objectivity which used to define quality. We need to try to define them and think about them in a different way in this new context.

Are objectivity and impartiality still important then?

A lot of Internet evangelists are saying that the idea of objectivity – that a journalist can put aside their personal biases and sort of pretend to be neutral –  doesn’t work anymore in a digital age. I think that is a misunderstanding of impartiality and objectivity. Reporters weren’t pretending not to have views. Rather, these ideas were like processes that journalists subjected themselves to in order to improve the quality of the information. They would try to get both sides of the story. They would try to be balanced. That was actually what those journalism norms of objectivity and impartiality meant. However, people are saying that that is now gone.

The American academic David Weinberger came up with the new phrase, transparency is the new objectivity. In other words, if you are completely open with your audience, if they know what your biases are, they know what agenda you have, then the audience is sophisticated enough to take that into account and that is sufficient.

Do you also think it is sufficient?

I think transparency and openness are very important now but I don’t think they are sufficient to drive quality. I think there are at least two other elements that need to be taken into account. The first one is a focus on evidence – eyewitness accounts, first hand evidence – and that is basic, old-fashioned news gathering in a way. The Internet is awash with opinion but there is very little evidence-led news gathering on the web and in many ways you see less and less of this. I think the Boston bombings was quite a key moment because some of the old-fashioned virtues of journalism which people had been dismissing actually proved their value. Reporter Pete Williams of NBC was lauded as a gold standard because he did very old-fashioned reporting. He made sure he had two sources before he broadcast anything. He was very measured. He attributed everything. Also the New York Times didn’t run with any rumor, it was very sober reporting. People appreciated that. In comparison, a lot of social media was hyping up speculation, throwing out rumors.

The other point is to ensure a diversity of opinion because otherwise people tend to select the opinion they are comfortable with. In a digital environment where people chose what they want to read, they can self-select only those opinions that they agree with. Actually, it is very important that people understand and recognize that there is a range of opinions and that people are stimulated by those things.

You were formerly the director of global news at the BBC. In your experience, when you talk of openness, do the traditional media organizations like BBC and Deutsche Welle struggle to be open?

Yes, culturally it is very difficult for many of the larger organizations to be open. They are used sitting on high being gatekeepers and being able to say, “we will tell you what we think you need to know at 6 pm if you tune in”. Or, “if you buy our newspaper, we will tell you what we think you need to read”. And these organizations also tend to be very closed and defensive about how they arrive at those judgments. But it is very important to respond to the audience and answer questions such as how did you arrive at those judgments or why did you arrive at those judgments. Showing how journalism works is as important to gaining people’s trust as the end product itself.

You recently co-authored a study looking at BBC’s online and television audiences for international news and found that TV was still the most important medium. Do you think the importance of social media as a source of information is being exaggerated?  

People who work in media or talk about the media believe that everyone else is on Twitter all the time, and they are not. Like many new developments, I think social media is overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term. All of the things we are talking about now are going to happen in the long term but it is going to take longer than we think. At the moment people still watch television and read newspapers. Increasingly people are using the web and social media as well but those who work in this environment tend to overestimate their importance.

I sometimes think there is a lack of critical discussion about the use of social media in news gathering. For example, BBC presented so much information in their coverage of the Boston bombing. Yet in your study, you found that audiences tend to switch off after 15 minutes.

Because media organizations can have access to all this material, they quite often want to use it all too. When covering bigger events, for example the Japan tsunami, the editor of a news bulletin wants to use 25 minutes of material and you can understand why. It’s extraordinary material with lots of important ramifications, plus the nuclear issue, so there is a lot to talk about and discuss. But what the study showed was that after about 15 minutes, most of the audience felt that they knew enough and turned away. There was  a limit to their interest and their attention. Again, this is a disjunction between those who work in the media and are obsessed with it and the audience who live in a slightly different environment.

With all this evolving and developing has journalism forgotten its core responsibility though?

There was a wave of enthusiasm around social media. Over the past few years, traditional broadcasting and traditional newspapers looked rather old fashioned and tired compared to the energy, vibrancy and enthusiasm of social media. But after a few years, we have now reached the stage where people are actually saying that some of the ethics, the processes, the traditions and values of traditional journalism still do matter. They are asking how we can combine those things with the energy of social media and have the best of both.

You are now a professor of journalism at Cardiff University. What advice can you give up and coming journalists on how to prepare for the digital change?

To be a journalist, you have to be immensely curious about the world and that hasn’t changed. The technology changes all the time. Now we have digital technology, such as iPhone reporting or Twitter. It is good to be open and learn about all of those tools but they are only tools. The fundamentals are still about accuracy of information, quality of information, fairness in how you approach it.

Richard Sambrook is a professor of journalism at Cardiff University. He was formerly the Director of Global News at the BBC and has more than 30 years of journalism experience. Sambrook was recently a guest fellow at the Reuter’s Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford where he completed two research papers – Delivering Trust: Impartiality and Objectivity in the Digital Age and the Public Appetite for Foreign News on TV and Online. DW Akademie’s interview with Richard Sambrook took place during the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, where he was taking part in several panel discussions.