A matter of trust(worthy engagement)
When you think of the word engagement, what springs to mind? Do questions about metrics and reach on various social media platforms emerge, or does it turn to questions about how to create or curate meaningful conversations with the audience about the subjects one covers?
Engagement encompasses a lot of territory — and can mean a lot of things to different people. In fact, many areas of civic life, including the media and science, are trying to figure out how to solve issues of trust — and how engagement perhaps can answer much of those questions.
It is accepted that engagement can be an answer to it. Yet, one wonders where to begin — where can impact be made initially?
In an age where relations between journalists and the audience remain at low rates, there are opportunities for journalists and media organizations to do meaningful engagement. Yet, with that comes the added ability of beginning to rectify the issue of trust that continues to lead much of the discussions about journalism’s future.
A good place to start can be at the beginning — by remembering one of the most important philosophies which guides the values of reporting in the digital age — honesty is the best policy, or honest engagement.

The culture of social media and the internet continue to challenge journalism and the role that it can have in a modern democracy. While business is debated, the opportunities to get information are numerous — and many people flock to social media sites like Twitter to try to get a sense of what is going on, and through the click of a couple of buttons, they can.
They get a sense of things through the plethora of tweets that come on their dashboard. Yet, some of that can be true, while some of it might not be. Journalists and media organizations have a goal to be honest when disseminating the news, be it on TV, the radio, in print, on the web or on social media.
If you as a journalist don’t know if something is true, say so. If you’re trying to verify something, speak up. No matter how complete your reporting is or your story when the time comes to hit publish or do that hit, an honest journalist is a credible journalist, and those explanations are honest engagement. The audience will appreciate that far more than seeing, hearing or viewing something that is rushed for incessant fanfare — and the desire of being first versus being right.
However, honest engagement is not solely confined to reporting and facts. While the ways that journalists can engage and interact with audiences have become numerous because of social media — social media is not the complete answer to that conversation. There are more abilities to hear feedback or answer questions — someone can email, write or call a journalist in a news organization.
Yet, those ways can be hard to reach sometimes, and if someone from the audience has an idea, a question about reporting practices or something to say, news organizations and journalists can be providing a disservice to them by having that information not readily available.
“Readers are who I’m worried about,” said Joy Mayer, who oversees the Trusting News Project and a group of journalists looking into engagement and collaboration called Gather (a group which I’m a part of, for what it’s worth, and recommend), in an interview with The Poynter Institute. “Imagine if someone actually had feedback or an idea or something you want.”
Audiences do have ideas and questions, and they’re willing to be honest with journalists about those ideas, as we journalists are honest about our facts and reporting.
The last thing that anyone wants to happen is to have anyone be stuck on hold for what can seem like eternity — all the while risking that audience member thinking that news organization — whose trust he or she has invested into that organization — and that journalist — whose goal is to serve his or her audience — doesn’t care.
For what it’s worth, there are some news organizations that have this information easily accessible — while others don’t. Yet, no matter if you’re a national news organization or a local organization, honest engagement happens with a conversation — a conversation that involves the audience, be it a tweet or a telephone call.
So no matter if its feedback on a story, a tip for a future piece or questions about editorial practices, honest engagement is meaningful engagement — and how a journalist or news organization responds to audiences can dictate whether the audience wants to engage with that journalist or organization again.
The questions of trust in journalism are ones that cannot be answered overnight, and the relationship between news organizations and audiences will not be mended completely by the time the next round of the news cycle kicks in.
Yet, mending this can begin with the simplest of engagements through a variety of methods — a conversation. For if audiences are willing to trust you as a journalist and be honest with you, the least you as a journalist can do is be honest with them. That is honest engagement.
It may not mend things immediately, but it’s a start — for trust by the audience does not simply mean an investment in time to get information, but the ability to have a dialogue about it with the media, and to have that dialogue contribute to the building of civil discourse.
It also has one other bonus for journalists and news organizations — honest engagement is credible engagement. After all, honesty is the best policy.







