At WEAU, News Director Rudy Murrieta works to earn trust with a 'promise'

By Briana Bush, Lab Reporter

With our modern world increasingly immersed in artificial intelligence and fake news, there’s one way to battle the rise of misinformation. You can help your audience have faith in you. You can earn trust. 

Earning audience trust is something that Rudy Murrieta, news director at Wisconsin's WEAU 13 News, knows is crucial but not an easy task. To achieve that, he has spent the past few years following three rules to commit to truth – “The WEAU Promise.” He has publicized it to his audience.

The WEAU Promise aims to build up trust, “story by story, day by day.” The three rules of the promise – accuracy, transparency and no bias – are achievable goals, Murrieta said.

WEAU seeks to deliver on its accuracy promise by publicly correcting mistakes and admitting to uncertainty, according to Murrieta. 

The importance of earning trust also applies to sources, Murrieta said. “If they don't trust you, they're not going to give you anything; they're not going to share things with you,” he said.

For transparency, he offers the public full access to WEAU interviews and an explanation on station decisions. “We need to be totally transparent, totally honest." Murrieta said.

The WEAU Promise states that there are no sides taken, no favorites. "Showing the ‘no bias’ and living it is a very, very important part."

Murrieta recounted one possible challenge to credibility, when there was a key choice to be made. At one point, Eau Claire County officials reported two tornadoes while the National Weather Service only identified one. WEAU was at a crossroads on who to go with.

From working in news broadcasts for 35 years, Murrieta knew that every second live counted. Running with the information on one perspective would be faster and easier than running both.

But with trust in mind, his decision was to run both to give viewers the full picture of the situation.

“I know it takes a little bit more on TV,” he said, but added that he thinks earning the people’s trust makes it “worth waiting that extra five seconds for that information.”

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