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
12. ABC News
1.2
Ranking: Poor (tied with Fox News, The Economist and the Daily Telegraph).
Details of Findings:
There is no corrections page and even doing a search on the web site does not bring up corrections.
The owner information can be found easily. It is listed somewhere on the home page (top or bottom), within 1-2 clicks. However, they do not list specific names or information on the board of directors.
No code of ethics or information on conflicts of interest.
No news values anywhere on the web site or on the Google search. Even prolonged searches on search engines like Google returned no relevant results and instead returned stories with the phrase “News Values” in them instead of actual News Values.