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A majority of the public believes the media can’t be trusted.

Which global news sites are most transparent about their operations? Not necessarily the ones you would think….

Openness & Accountability: A Study of Transparency in Global Media Outlets

Main Results

Study Conclusions

Understanding Results

Why Transparency?

Study Methodology

Authors

The study used five categories to evaluate the news outlets:

Corrections: Willingness to openly correct mistakes.

Ownership: Openness about corporate ownership.

Staff Policies: Openness about conflicts of interest.

Reporting Policies: Openness about editorial guidelines.

Interactivity: Openness to reader comments and criticism.

	Excellent
	Very Good
	Average
	Poor
	Not Acceptable

	Overall Score	Corrections	Ownership	Staff Policies	Reporting Policies	Interactivity
8. Wall Street Journal	2

Ranking: Good (tied with MSNBC).
Details of Findings:
	The corrections page was very easy to find, simple to navigate and provided plenty of information. It can be located on the second tab across the top of the home page in a drop down menu. Once on the “Corrections and Amplifications” page all of the current corrections are listed. Information provided with the corrections includes: date, pages, correction and links to the original articles. There are also features to e-mail and print the corrections page. Past corrections are archived on the site and can be searched using the “search” feature on the right side of the page.
	The Wall Street Journal is owned by the Dow Jones company. This information is clearly available at the bottom of the page. It’s given through several links, such as “About Dow Jones.” The site is copyrighted to Dow Jones, as shown at the bottom of the homepage. Clicking on the “About” page brings the viewer to a mission statement of the company.
	There is no information provided for codes of conduct or how to deal with conflicts of interest. When searching the Web for any past or potential conflicts of interest with the Wall Street Journal, nothing was found.
	The Web site does not provide any information about news values.
	A customer service page is linked at the top of home page. It links to a page with contact information, but services are mostly for subscribers. Most links on the Web site’s pages can only be accessed by subscribers, and subscriptions are not free. Some free features are links to reporter and topical blogs. There are no forums of live chats available at all. In the “Contact Us” link there is a list of each department from the paper and a contact e-mail. There is no ombudsman, no ability to comment on a story and links to the reporter’s e-mails were not available.
(Nicole Alberico and Catherine Citroni)

About The Wall Steet Journal

Circulation/Audience

2,083,660 daily **WSJ Sunday, a special insert that is distributed with other newspapers has a circulation of 4.3 million.

Online Access

WSJ offers some free articles, but most require an online subscription.

Parent Company

Dow Jones http://www.dj.com/

Other Relevant Ownership and Interests

-The International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/
-The Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/news/globe/
-15 other daily newspapers and 9 network affiliated TV stations http://www.nytco.com/company-othersites.html

Parent Company Revenue

$1.78 billion

A center of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism and the School of Public Policy. Copyright © 2006 International Center for Media and the Public Agenda. 1117 Journalism Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742