PressProgress Joins Canada’s National NewsMedia Council

PressProgress, an award-winning non-profit news organization focused on producing original investigative and explanatory journalism, is pleased to announce it has joined Canada’s National NewsMedia Council.

The NNC is a voluntary, self-regulatory body for Canada’s news media industry that promotes ethical journalistic practices.

“The National NewsMedia Council was founded on the need to support, and reinforce, the highest of professional and ethical journalistic standards amongst its members and to inform the public about the important role journalism plays in a democratic society,” said NNC Managing Director Brent Jolly.

“As a self-regulatory organization, we believe membership in the NNC sends a clear signal to readers of a news organization’s desire to be held accountable for the materials they publish.”

Luke LeBrun, Editor of PressProgress, said joining the NNC shows newer digital outlets are committed to being part of a healthy, democratic media ecosystem at a time when a changing news industry and bad actors are causing some news readers to question who they can trust.

“This is another step that proves PressProgress is a good actor that takes its commitment to accuracy and responsible journalistic practices seriously,” LeBrun said.

“Challenging Canadians to think critically about the information they consume has always been at the core of PressProgress’ editorial mission since we launched nearly a decade ago in 2013,” LeBrun pointed out. “There is a lot of bad information floating around the Internet these days, we recognize it’s important to be proactive and earn the trust of readers.”

“Anyone who feels we haven’t lived up to our own Journalistic Standards is welcome to lodge a complaint and have an independent third-party weigh in on whether we did something wrong.”

One of the main aims of the National NewsMedia Council is to serve as a forum for handling public complaints against its members. The Council considers complaints about accuracy, journalistic standards and ethics in gathering and reporting the news.

“Complaints brought against members are evaluated against the news outlet’s own codes of practice and on generally-accepted industry journalistic standards, whether the member is a large daily news publication, a burgeoning digital-only news site, or a student campus publication,” Jolly said.

Other National NewsMedia Council members include traditional print news sources, such as the Canadian Press, Globe and Mail and Toronto Star as well as digital sources like Canadaland, Queen’s Park Today and Overstory Media Group’s community publications.

In addition to membership in the National NewsMedia Council, PressProgress has also launched a new Trust page on its website highlighting various steps the news organization has taken to promote transparency, accountability and responsible journalistic standards.

Earlier this year, PressProgress was given a perfect “credibility and transparency” score from NewsGuard, an international rating service that evaluates the credibility of news sources.