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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. MSNBC	2

Ranking: Good (tied with the Wall Street Journal).
Details of Findings:
	The corrections link is labeled clearly on the homepage and one click away.
	The owner information can be found easily. It is listed somewhere on the home page (top or bottom), within 1-2 clicks. However, no specific names are given.
	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.
	There was no ombudsman. The only option for submitting letters to the editor is through the Newsweek site, which is attached to MSNBC. There were no specific names, however, there is the option to send an email to a general address for each program. There are blogs by reporters and there is a link on the homepage. The only live chats available are through Newsweek. Readers can comment directly after the story and see others comments as well.
(Lisa Rassenti and Leah Cowdrey)

About NBC/MSNBC

Circulation/Audience

7pm Wed March 14 – Hardball with Chris Matthews: 113
NBC Nightly News: Week of Feb 26, 9,390,000

Online Access

No log in needed.

Parent Company

NBC Universal http://www.nbc.com/ owned by General Electric

Other Relevant Ownership and Interests

-CNBC http://www.cnbc.com/
-Bravo http://www.bravotv.com/
-Telemundo http://tv.telemundo.yahoo.com/corporativo/
-Universal http://www.universalstudios.com/index.php
-USA Network http://www.usanetwork.com/

Parent Company Revenue

$20.8 Billion for 2006

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