My name is LaToya Dennis. I’m the news director here at Central Florida Public Media. I’m not someone you hear from a lot -- I typically stay behind the scenes, working to ensure that we are living up to our mission of connecting and empowering our region through trustworthy, independent journalism and thoughtful conversation rooted in fact.
Here at Central Florida Public Media, we recently revisited our mission. Our goal was to make sure that the work we do lives up to what it says, and that our mission still aligns with our goals. We reevaluated not only our mission, but also our values – the core beliefs and principles that guide our work and decisions. Those values include integrity, independence, and courage but also transparency.
Transparency is what this column is all about.
Over the years, we’ve gotten a lot of questions from our audience asking about our reporting process: How did you come across that story? Why did you include those perspectives and not others? Why is this story important to me and my community? How do I know I can trust what you are reporting? These are some just some of the questions we receive on any given day.
Talking about the work we do, our standards, and how we actually do our jobs isn’t new to us. You can easily find our journalism ethics code of conduct and our public media code of integrity at the bottom of every story. And transparency is why we’ve previously published editor’s notes when we’ve done major series, Central Florida Seen & Heard, for example. Transparency is also why we acknowledge when we are reporting on a station sponsor—an organization that pays for airtime in the form of underwriting on Central Florida Public Media. We want to be clear that a sponsor's financial contribution does not influence our reporting. We also acknowledge when we make a mistake.
Still, with all we do, I feel that we can do even more when it comes to giving you additional insight into the stories we’re reporting on, like the how and the why. So, we’ve decided to start talking more about our editorial process.
Every month, at least for the next year or so, we are committed to taking you behind the scenes of some of the decisions we’re making. It could be how we chose the topic for a major series we’re working on – bringing you behind the scenes into the editorial decisions that we make. It could also be about which communities we choose to hold listening sessions, which are off-the-record conversations with communities about what stories are important to them. We’re going to be talking about why we made the decisions we made and the work that goes into bringing you the news and information you need to make decisions in your day-to-day life.
In a world full of claims of fake news and distortion of the facts, we want to reassure you that you can count on us to do our jobs of brining you trustworthy, independent journalism and thoughtful conversation rooted in fact.
We’re also launching a brief questionnaire for you to take at the end of our digital stories this week. Did you learn something new? Were multiple perspectives adequately represented? What questions do you have after our reporting? Our goal is always to keep you informed and find ways to better serve you.
Thanks for engaging!
LaToya
