GoodWork Paper 39: Trust In the Balance: Autonomy and Accountability in Law and Journalism

Author(s): Henry Rubin

Editor(s): Jeff Solomon, Series Editor

Media: Paper

Description: Unmitigated market forces have come to dominate the professions of law and journalism. One potential counterforce to these market forces is trust. Trust derives from a judgment that another person is likely to act toward the common good and not selfishly. Having trust or being trusted undercuts the temptation to “defect” in the prisoner‘s dilemma that characterizes market-based society. Trust is a social structuring condition that balances the twinned values of autonomy and accountability. Interviews from a group of 65 journalists and 33 lawyers from two types of law (general practitioners and corporate mergers and acquisitions) were examined for examples of trust. Findings suggest that lawyers in general practice are ensconced in circles of accountability that encourage trust. Corporate lawyers are less integrated into community networks of accountability and have excessive autonomy. Journalists, especially once they are well-established, are given autonomy while less established reporters at corporately owned papers are excessively managed and lack the autonomy necessary to do good work. Comparisons between white and non-white journalists demonstrate different ideas about objectivity and engagement. White journalists value autonomous objectivity, decreasing the regulatory power of community norms. In contrast, the excessive accountability of non-white reporters to their communities increases the potential for conflicts of interest. Neither scenario is desirable for the cultivation of trust. In both law and journalism, trust transforms vertical relationships between supervisors and subordinates into mentoring relationships. Trust also encourages cooperation across horizontal relationships between colleagues in other organizations and co-workers within one organization. Developing mentoring relationships harmonizes the need for autonomy with the demand for accountability. Renewing collegial relationships across and between these institutions will reinstitute community accountability where too much autonomy has loosened the norms and commitments to journalistic principles. The ideal form of trust for counteracting market forces is a balance between autonomy and accountability in both horizontal and vertical relationships.