Following the news is not meant to be a passive experience. Media companies clearly must take responsibility for their content, but the folks who access that content also have a responsibility, if only to be aware of its nature.
Most of us have gotten used to the signals provided in the traditional, mainstream media. For example, over time, our major newspapers have adopted standards that make the difference between advertising and editorial visually clear. If theres a danger that an ad might be confused with a news story, the ad is labeled advertorial. The newspapers opinion is generally carried on a clearly marked editorial page, and other published opinions usually appear on a facing page known in newspaper jargon as Op-Ed. Advertising on television and radio is, for the most part, easily recognizable, and most stations dont seem to broadcast editorials any more. Opinionated articles by columnists in magazines and newspapers typically have special formatting, including a photo of the writer, that make it clear to readers that these are not straight news stories.
The trouble online
In the still-evolving online media, the practices are not so well established. That makes the job of the user more difficult and, in my mind, the responsibility for clearly labeling different types of content all the more important for online publishers. Unfortunately, some online publishers including MSNBC.com arent doing as well as they should in this regard.
By far the most common concern I hear from readers has to do with the mixing of links to opinion and news articles on MSNBC.coms home page a page accessed by around 40 percent of all visitors to the site. Opinion articles are almost always clearly labeled on the story page itself. But, as Sullivan Richardson of Las Vegas wrote in a typical complaint: Links to these (opinion) columns on the MSNBC home page have often been mixed with links to news stories without making it clear that these links are to opinions. Therefore, it has been easy for readers, including myself, to sometimes think they were jumping to another news story instead of to an opinion.
The MSNBC policy
MSNBC.com policy is to indicate by the way the home page headline is written that a link goes to an opinion piece rather than a news story, says editor-in-chief Merrill Brown. Such a headline is supposed to include either the word opinion or the authors last name i.e., either Opinion: (Headline Text) or AuthorName: (Headline Text). Mostly, this is what happens though I know of at least one recent instance where it was not. (A Chris Byron column labeled Opinion on the story page nevertheless was promoted on the home page May 9 under the headline Ciscos worker productivity fairy tale.)
That was simply an editing error. The bigger problem is inconsistency, because frequently MSNBC.com carries home page headlines including an author name, but which link to news stories or analysis rather than to opinion pieces. For example, a May 30 Howard Fineman piece (The state of things in U.S. politics) included the authors name in the home page headline but was labeled News/Politics on the story page. Similarly, a May 14 article by senior MSNBC writer Jane Weaver was promoted on the home page with the headline Weaver: Personal TVs fuzzy picture but appeared under a Technology label on the article page.
That happens, says Brown, because sometimes the site wants to showcase particularly well-known or popular journalists whose names are likely to attract added attention to an article. Unfortunately, that also means users cant rely on the home page headline policy to tell the difference between news and opinion.
Other users object to opinion articles being linked at all from the home page.
Implied endorsement?
I think placing a link directly to an opinion article on the home page gives a sort of implied endorsement, wrote Rob Reed of Bolingbrook, IL. You dont see this on the New York Times front page.
Brown responds: Were trying to change the concept of what the first page of a users experience is to be. The home page of the site is meant to highlight the most important and interesting stories we have. Its not a newspaper front page. If we have a very provocative, beautifully written opinion piece, I have always advocated that it go on the home page because its among the best things we have that day.
I think promoting opinions on the home page raises legitimate issues reflecting on the standards of the site.
Its also true that MSNBC.coms home page includes links to many more stories than youll find on the front page of any major newspaper. And the page changes many times over the course of any 24-hour period, meaning that literally dozens of articles may be featured on the page during the course of a day. Under the circumstances, its only logical that the home page link at times to many articles that are not strictly hard news.
That said, I think promoting opinions on the home page raises legitimate issues reflecting on the standards of the site. For example, since the incentive is to promote a variety of content in hopes of enticing more users to click, seldom is space given on the home page to multiple opinion articles at the same time, even if they deal with a common subject.
Prominent opinion
Seeing only one perspective on the subject linked from the home page, a user can be forgiven for thinking it represents MSNBC.coms point of view. This is particularly true when an opinion piece is promoted from the center of the home page, immediately below the MSNBC logo an area known internally as the stage. One recent example: a June 4 opinion piece by Chris Matthews (Grading the First Teacher) and linked from the stage, along with news articles about the defection of former Republican, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont.
In reality, a perfect separation of fact and opinion in the media is impossible, even if everyone agreed on the definition of those words as they might pertain to any given subject. (At what point does analysis become opinion?) But at a minimum, news organizations should give consistent signals to their audience about whether they consider a given article news or opinion.
At MSNBC.com, that would require, at a minimum, a new policy for visually identifying opinion articles when theyre linked to from the home page.
Id go further and argue that if opinions are promoted on the home page at all, they should be relegated to a specific area of that page perhaps among the headlines below the stage, but never on it. MSNBC.com regularly promotes itself as the number one Internet news site, and its stage is its most visible and prestigious showcase. Its usually devoted exclusively to news. That should always be the case.
