By Leslie Cauley Co-Founder, TruthDAO
Deep in my heart, even as a kid, I have always known that reporters have the best job in the world: finding and telling the truth.
From there, a career took shape. I eventually landed at The Wall Street Journal in New York. The year was 1993. Paul Steiger, the paper’s iconic former managing editor, was running the newsroom. Peter Kann, a Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent, was the publisher. Our unofficial motto was bold and unapologetic: “We yield to no one.”
Facts ruled. Nobody had to tell us to put our opinions away when we were on the job; that was understood. Editors kept an eye out for words, phrases, and other placements that even hinted at bias. The rest of the editorial chain was just as fierce and unflagging in its clear-eyed commitment to fairness, accuracy, and balance. Other newsrooms of the era, including our esteemed crosstown rival, The New York Times, did the same.
That was then.
Today, it’s a big pile of partisanship out there. With support from their editorial chains, reporters slant interviews and twist facts. Context is often treated as an afterthought — if it’s thought about at all. Headlines tell readers what to think before they even get to the first line of the story. Another modern invention, the “newsroom narrative,” is just a sly way of saying that the story has been parsed, spun, and stacked to align with the outlet’s view. Stories that challenge newsroom orthodoxy are downplayed, or just skipped altogether.
As for the esteemed The New York Times, it is now an advocacy platform that has a left-lean point of view splayed across its news pages each day. Same for The Washington Post, CNN, and other former standard-bearers. Right lean outfits like FOX, Breitbart, and OAN make no bones about their politics. That was their birthright, after all.
Readers see right through it. According to Gallup, 86% of Americans think news outlets are biased. More than half (54%) think reporters misrepresent facts. Nearly a third (28%) believe they are making up facts entirely. Meantime, editorial normalization of the abnormal continues. Witness recent calls by some newsrooms to do away with “bothsidesism,” referring to the time-honored practice of covering both sides of a story — not just the side the reporter agrees with.
Add it all up and it’s no wonder US Media is now the least trusted journalistic body in the world, according to a global survey by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University.
The public deserves better. And that’s why we created TruthDAO, the world’s first Web 3.0 and blockchain-backed Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) dedicated to nonpartisan, bias-free journalism. Members contribute story ideas, provide perspectives, engage in debate, and help fulfill our mission to bring trusted, fact-based journalism back to the world.
Education is a key part of our journey. TruthDAO will serve as a convening body to unite people around the globe to discuss, debate, and elevate issues that most concern news consumers. Invited guests will also participate, including J-schools, students, business leaders, innovators, web3 experts, and members of the media.
TruthDAO is also a publishing platform for our independent news organization — as yet unnamed. It goes without saying, I hope, but I’ll say it anyway: Our reporters will deliver news and other content that is fair, balanced, and bias-free, along with all sides of the story. This is a US-based editorial operation with global ambitions.
We just hired our first reporter, Kathy Chu, an award-winning journalist for USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. Kathy will cover the Cryptosphere and also engage with leading disruptors and other innovators to get a bead on what’s around the bend for the $3 trillion crypto economy. (Elon Musk, Vitalik Buterin, Mark Cuban, Brian Armstrong, Jamie Dimon, and Gary Gensler — are you game?)
News and other content will be posted to the TruthDAO site; over time it will be migrated to a dedicated, blockchain-backed platform. We do not accept ads**.**
If you’re a journalist and think you might have an interest in joining our team, or just want to learn more, please DM me on Twitter.
There’s power, knowledge, and authority in any global community. Same goes for TruthDAO, and our reporters will take full advantage by engaging regularly, and in some cases directly, with our community members. That’s the Citizen Journalist part of the experience. Members will be encouraged to rate our content on a rolling basis. Trustworthiness will be a key metric for us.
TruthDAO is a social experience. Over time, we envision a full roster of special events — live, interactive, and virtual — that complement our core mission. Members will be involved in the development of these and other branded events that may be offered over time.
As with any major undertaking, TruthDAO is the result of a significant team effort — for more than 15 months now, in our case. Our team is grounded by a talented and hardworking group of Bay Area engineers and technologists who are experts in crypto technology, development, AI, and operations, among other things. We also have team members in Los Angeles, New York, and Austin, Texas, and an extended network of A-list supporters nationally. We’ll cover that territory in a future post.
In closing, I’d like to leave you with this, because it cuts straight to the heart of our mission, and also speaks to our larger hopes for TruthDAO as a global community:
According to Gallup, 84% of Americans blame Mass Media for division in America. The same number — 84% — believes that Mass Media “can serve as a healing force.”
We stand ready to do our part. And we are inviting you to join us — together we can help restore integrity, fairness, and balance to journalism.
*TruthDAO is a nonpartisan, bias-free professional news organization and publishing platform, built with community support and interaction through a decentralized “DAO” structure. Join our communit*y and visit our Web site.