Launching A Trusted Journalism Campaign to Support Democracy

By Akhtar Badshah and Pamela Kilborn-Miller

The United States is experiencing a crisis of trust in journalism that is undermining our democracy. The situation is eroding public health, governance, civil society, industry, the environment, and international relations with vast and alarming consequences.

There’s a critical need to develop the informed citizenry that Thomas Jefferson said is at the heart of dynamic democracy. To address this existential challenge, our nonpartisan Trusted Journalism campaign aims to strengthen trust in journalism, a key mechanism for delivering fact-based information to all residents and their communities.

Getting Started

In 2017, the former head of Microsoft Philanthropies, Akhtar Badshah, PhD launched the Accelerating Social Transformation (AST) leadership program at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle. One of his first students, Pamela Kilborn-Miller, expressed alarm that “fake news” and disinformation were eroding our democracy and wondered how to combat it in a nonpartisan manner.

“What’s the least we can do to have the biggest impact?”

While pondering this question from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation[1], Pamela recalled that Public Service Announcements (PSAs) from the Ad Council have delivered a positive impact for decades. She floated the idea of creating a PSA video to combat misinformation to Associate Professor Jevin West, Co-Director of the UW DataLab and now Director of the Center for an Informed Public (CIP). Professor West expressed interest and quickly became a founding partner in the campaign.

It was critical that we brought on a network of trustworthy journalism-inspired organizations to join our nonpartisan partnership. We enlisted Hive Media Lab at Cascade Public Media to help us develop a PSA video for the 2018 election. Then, through networking and some happenstance, we found collaborative partners that worked together to win support from the Microsoft Defending Democracy Program, in some cases contribute their own funds, and develop a broader campaign for the 2020 elections. These organizations included:

1. Accelerating Social Transformation (AST) at University of Washington (UW), which incubated the campaign and remains an active partner.
2. Center for an Informed Public (CIP) at UW, which provided academic research, subject matter expertise, and supervised the campaign’s evaluation report in collaboration with the UW Communication Leadership program.
3. Hive Media Lab at Cascade Public Media, the PBS affiliate in Seattle, which provided start-up support, produced the initial PSA video and was the campaign’s first fiscal sponsor.
4. Microsoft Defending Democracy Program, which was our primary funder for the 2020 elections.
5. The Trust Project, a global trailblazer dedicated to building trusted and trustworthy news, provided guidance, subject matter expertise, content in the form of the 8 Trust Indicators, plus evidence-based research results and additional funding.
6. Radio Television Digital News Association in the National Press Building, Washington, D.C. RTDNA became our fiscal sponsor in 2019 and is the world’s largest professional organization devoted exclusively to broadcast and digital journalism.

Anatomy of a Successful PSA

Our nonpartisan 2020 election plan focused on distributing short PSA videos via Facebook (FB) ads to people over age 65 in swing states. We based our target audience on research from the 2016 elections by Professor Andrew Guess at Princeton University that found older audiences were most likely to share misinformation via FB at that time.

We consulted research reported by the United Nations, Scientific American and The Trust Project to inform our campaign goals, which included: Move the audience to “take a pause” before sharing news on Facebook, learn the 8 Trust Indicators, and sign a pledge to “share trusted journalism.” Here’s one of the short PSA videos from our Share page:

The 8 Trust Indicators

Because they are a proven tool to build confidence in the news, the 8 Trust Indicators became the cornerstone of our effort. The Trust Project developed the indicators through a user-centered design process that included interviews with members of the public followed by workshops with senior news executives. Our campaign promoted a news literacy version, for example:

• Best Practices: Transparent and Accountable. What is the editorial mission? Who funds it? A commitment to ethics and accuracy is front and center.
• Labels: What am I reading? Labels distinguish opinion, analysis and advertiser content with clear, straightforward language.
• Journalist Expertise: Who is the person who wrote the news? What is their expertise?
• References: What’s the source? For in-depth stories, access to the sources behind the facts and assertions.
• Learn all 8 Trust Indicators.

2020 Campaign Findings

With support from 4Site Interactive Studios in Washington, D.C., the UW Communication Leadership program and the Center for an Informed Public produced a 2020 Evaluation Report for our campaign. It found that the PSAs, in the form of Facebook ads, were viewed a combined 831,684 times by 136,127 people for an average of eight views per person. In all, 6,371 clicked through to the materials on the PSA website, or 4.6% of all people reached.

The impact also was evaluated through video interviews with volunteers from the Facebook audience and one other who viewed the PSAs as ads. Recommendations from the evaluation report included:

1. Forgo an emotionally charged tone and use an educational one.
2. Use individual Trust Indicators as graphic ads. These will immediately educate people on how to assess the trustworthiness of the news and focus the users’ attention on feeling empowered to tackle the problem, rather than think about the problem and whether the issue is partisan.
3. Use Facebook Brand Lift to track the reach and impact of ads in real time. Scrutinize Facebook’s targeting tools to ensure that a wide range of people are reached.

What’s Next?

The global pandemic has awakened more people to the value of accurate news and their own role in choosing it. The Trusted Journalism campaign partners are currently planning the next iteration of our campaign to strengthen trust in journalism.

For example, the civic tone in the U.S. is so shrill and divisive right now that we’re evaluating how local, nonpartisan public ambassadors might help create a more accurately informed public. For instance, in one major success story described in the New Yorker, one woman helped her Alabama town increase its COVID-19 vaccination rate to 94% of all adults and 100% of people over age 65 — in a state where only 56% of residents had had a single vaccine dose. Through the Panola Project, according to the New Yorker’s documentary film, “Dorothy Oliver fights vaccine hesitancy with kindness” (August 11, 2021).

Accelerating Social Transformation (AST), which was created by Dr. Badshah, provides the space for anyone to discover their purpose and develop their “purpose mindset (www.purpose-mindset.org)” to drive positive change in the community. AST’s belief is that anyone can make a difference if you have a strong idea, the desire to be creative, surround yourself with the right partners, build momentum, and see it through with determination.

Learn & Share The 8 Trust Indicators. For example:

[1] Pamela originally heard the question “What’s the least we can do to have the biggest impact?” while consulting at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2001.

Special Thanks

Peter Blomquist and Bob Ness, co-founders of the Global Leadership Forum in Seattle, played key roles during the startup phase. Bob helped secure initial funding through The Peg and Rick Young Foundation, which made the campaign possible.

Brian Glanz & Jeremy Cropf co-founded the original “We the People” PSA campaign at Cascade Public Media in Seattle.

Heming Nelson, President of 4Site Interactive Studios in Washington D.C., created and distributed the 2020 campaign, plus compiled data for the evaluation.

Alexandra Rochester, UW Communications Leadership graduate student, wrote the evaluation report with guidance from Alex Stonehill and Professor Jevin West.

Authors

Akhtar Badshah, PhD. Faculty, Evans School for Public Policy & Governance, University of Washington, UW Accelerating Social Transformation leadership program founded by Dr. Badshah incubated this campaign.

Pamela Kilborn-Miller, MS. Director of the Trusted Journalism campaign. Pam’s background includes award-winning journalism, Microsoft (10+ years), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (consultant), and managing a global TED Prize-winning project.

Drive Social Impact and Spur Innovation Across Sectors: The Accelerating Social Transformation (AST) program catalyzes the potential of social impact leaders from across the non-profit, foundation, development and business communities to drive transformational social change. Learn More.