Holding the Media Accountable

For years, I've thought and thought about how one might go about holding the media accountable for their dastardly deeds such as the smearing of Alaskan Senator Ted Stephens, or Dan Rather's Memogate, the pre-election smearing of George Bush.

The problem is, even mention the notion of constraints on the media and quite literally everyone goes berserk. Kim Jong Il himself comes out and distances himself from your foolish and clumsy comments! So I'm not proposing anything that might threaten the independent media.

But the media prints a never ending stream of fallacious stories. Something needs to be done! Is there a better option?

I'm not certain, but there might be. Someone in the business could probably shed a lot of light on the topic. Here's my proposal:

Companies like VeriSign, Inc. and Thawte are what are known as "certificate authorities". Suppose some internet company, say MeAndYou, Inc. decides to start selling on the web. The result, MeAndYou.com. In order to accept credit card and other payments, and to ensure customers their site is a safe place to do business, they're going to need to purchase a digital certificate. It's just a file they install on their web server that makes it possible to talk to their web server over a secure (encrypted) conversation. But it's more than that. Each cryptographic key uses a unique key/cipher combination that no one else on earth is using. So long as they don't give out their server key file, no one can listen in on credit card purchases between a customer's browser and their web site.

But VeriSign won't give a server certificate to just anyone. They'll first do research into the background of the company. VeriSign's good name is at stake, should their trusted company do something immoral. When they allow some company to use a VeriSign-issued certificate, they are saying that "you can trust MeAndYou.com because we trust MeAndYou.com!" Company personnel records must be submitted, background checks are done, and criminal activity is probed. Once the lengthy and expensive process is complete, the certificate is issued and on day 1, MeAndYou.com is in business with the VeriSign stamp of approval on their website. The server certificate that MeAndYou.com is a child certificate of a VeriSign "root certificate" that must already be installed on a customer's browser, often called something like "DST Root CA X2" (an actual certificate from Digital Signature Trust, another Certificate Authority (CA)).

You know that little yellow lock on the bottom right hand of your browser? When it's locked, it means that you are talking securely to a server with a trusted certificate over an encrypted connection. A red alert denotes that something is wrong with this site's certificate. It might be expired or completely invalid. Or you might not posses the Root Certificate from which this site derives it's “chain-of-trust” authority.

Now, I'm sorry for the long (hopefully not useless) technical discussion. The point is to understand where the idea comes from and how it might work. No such organization, as I am about to describe, exists to date.

Imagine that the LA Times and Wall Street Journal subscribed to a private-sector service, let's say Trust-o-Media (TOM for short). Before the LA Times could publish a story, they would be contractually required to submit their story, as well as a bibliography of fact-to-source mappings showing that their story is, in fact, supported by actual living, breathing sources. TOM looks over their article and sees that all the facts stated seem to have a corresponding source. None of the content is extremely controversial, so they immediately turn around and issue the story a 9.0 out of 10 rating. No delay in publication. In time, news organizations would come to start printing even before their certification comes back because the system would keep their reporters honest, something with which the big news papers seem to constantly struggle. In other words, "While there is some opinion weeded into this story, the basic facts of the story are all sourced and referenced to our satisfaction. Contact information has been provided for all sources, and while we (TOM) have not contacted any of them, there does not appear to be any pseudo names or untraceable sources referenced in this story." Sources such as "deep-throat" would not be accepted. Any such submissions would result in a deduction of 5 or more points. The LA Times would be forced to rescind the publication of that story, find other sources, or disclose to their media-trust organization the identification of deep throat.

When stories of great interest, overturning accepted dogmas or of a potentially damaging nature either to someone's reputation, livelihood, or well-being, only multiple sources would meet the criteria set down by the Standard Media Trust Consortium, a W3C-like standards body that attempts to regulate the Rules of Rating so a story submitted to multiple media trust organization would result in a similar rating. Spoof stories would occasionally be submitted by the SMTC to several Media Trust organizations and their ratings would be internally reviewed once it was revealed that the story was a spoof. This would keep the Media Trust organizations honest, competitive, and non-complicit with the news organizations that subscribe to them. Findings of fairness would be made public on a quarterly basis. But in the end, greater claims require greater proof. We might even be able to get back to a 3+ source story in time!

Trust-o-Media is also bound by the contract. Since the LA Times submitted their story sources to only one media trust organization, they'll know, in the event anyone leaks it, where the leak originated. TOM, under severe criminal and civil penalties, agrees never to publish or reveal the story sources submitted by the LA Times. Never with an asterisk! This ensures the independence, and freedom of the media.

In the past decade, a pattern of leaking sensitive national security intelligence to the media has emerged at the Pentagon as well as congressional members and staffers. Also in the past few years, self-serving reporters have gone to jail rather than reveal their sources because they know that's the worst anyone will do to them; and they'll be heroes in the media when they emerge from their exile. Using a media trust authority would take out of the hands of a reporter the decision of whether his story endangered national security and should be prosecuted. This would make reporters much more submissive to the needs and safety of their fellow countrymen, a badly needed character trait in today's media. Meanwhile, TOM would only reveal sources after the LA Times failed to fund the court defense to keep those sources private. So long as the LA Times continues to fund the court challenges and the challenges don't run dry, the media trust authority would keep those sources safe and private.

Under normal circumstances, a well-catalogued bibliography would suffice to get a story a high 8+ rating. But suppose a 3rd party takes exception to the story. Perhaps their business is hurt or their personal character is assailed? Would they have any recourse? Yes. If they can raise the funds or pay for it themselves, they can go directly to the Media Trust Authority and challenge the veracity of any one fact or the entire basis for any story. Since the StoryTrust ID is published at the top of every story, a company could go directly to TOM and pay him $10,000 to track down the sources for a particular story and re-rate the story based on a more detailed investigation. Again, greatest care would be required on the part of the Media Trust Authority not to reveal any sources even after their investigation is complete. This would add an additional threat to reporters and media organizations. There would be the ever-present threat of forced-retraction or public ridicule when a 9.0 story is reduced to a 0.5 story because the sources didn't check out. Additionally, quarterly-updated numbers would be made available on all reporters and news agencies. A record would follow a reporter for his entire life, even if he switches news organizations ten times. This is because the Standard Media Trust Consortium would see to it that ratings would be similar for all news outlets. Scores would be transferable to the next Media Trust Authority using a standard ratings representation.

All these mechanisms would be even easier to put in place for online media organizations. Standard tools could be made available to organizations wishing to either switch Media Trust Authorities or subscribe to multiple authorities. There need not be any vendor lock in.

All photos would be screened for likely fraud such as the world famous Iranian multiple rocket launch or the Reuters fallacious Israeli-Hezbollah war photos seeming to indict Israel for bogus atrocities.

Nothing would convince the papers and magazines to pay for the overhead of a Media Trust Authority except readers requesting it and refusing to subscribe to any paper that won't use one. If an organization won't submit to being "kept honest", then what does that say about them?

Now I don't have the sway or resources to affect any sort of change in the media. I'm just one guy who can accept that these things demands of a free society can't be reconciled. My hope is that someone with some clout might grab hold of the idea and make something of it. "An informed citizenry is the bulwark of democracy". At a time when the founding fathers are being quoted with refreshing frequency, these words of Thomas Jefferson seem pointed and vital to our continued adherence to the Judeo Christian ethic that has historically shaped our public conscience and moral fiber. I believe that if America is to survive as a nation rather than a slave to world opinion and bleeding edge voyeurism, then we need to be able to trust more of what we read in print, on the internet, and on the screen. Honesty and truth need to be the pursuits of the people, not just the marketing slogans of the main stream media.