Earlier this week, I had found presscourt.com via Suesie Kent Hempfling at Correspondences.org. Press Court describes itself as "the people's voice in news coverage" and is looking to be a forum of sorts to "try" news reporting that is looked at as having a slant one way or another. People can sign up to be part of the "jury," where they will receive notices of complaints via email, and in turn can take part in a "moderated discussion board" where I am guessing some sort of decision will be made on each instance of slant or bias.

Bias is a neverending story with those in and around the media, and will probably not go away anytime soon. Many people have expressed their concern on the topic for years and years now - but has anything changed over that time? And more importantly, will anything change? Obviously a tool such as Press Court is only as useful as the size and scope of the people who show up to take part in the jury pool. Unfortunately, just like our judicial system, the pool can be tainted or have a "slant" of its own.

I'm not at all trying to criticize this idea, because I think anything that starts an open forum for people to discuss their concerns (especially media-related ones) is great. I just hope that it doesn't attain a one way focus because of who signs up. Kind of like how the conservative and liberal political groups may have a vocal minority who end up being the outsider-viewed majority. It would be great to believe that an organization could take shape where people of differing opinions could put themselves in a "room" and discuss something, present all sides, and be genuinely interested in the same thing - ethical behavior in reporting and journalism.

Just yesterday, Jay Rosen at PressThink posted a piece entitled "He Said, She Said, We Said" where he discusses a move that is taking place (or at least needs to start) that has media organizations taking responsibility for what a reader sees when they read an article. We all know that facts can be reported four different ways by four different people who were all sitting in the same room and have the same information. It's finding that fine line between reporting and editorialism that is key. As I've said numerous times before in this space - it's not that the reporters are trying to be incorrect or slanted - it just happens based on the fact that they are human beings and have experiences that give them a certain thought process when taking in information to create a written piece.

I'm really glad that Jay Rosen matched up Press Court to the items in his post. It's a natural fit/transition, and definitely got a discussion going. After reading the comments at PressThink, I thought it quite interesting that just over three houra after Rosen's lead to the Press Court site, already a comment was posted that said, "Woo hoo. PressCourt! Let's criminalize bias. Holy Smokes! Viva transparency. Is MediaWitchHunt.org available?" Again - the point isn't about criminalization - it's about removing bias from the media overall. If it wasn't an issue, we wouldn't be here talking about it, would we?