Sally Lehrman

Sally Lehrman is a Peabody Award-winning journalist and the founder and CEO of the Trust Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan initiative focused on strengthening public confidence in news through accountability, integrity, and transparency. Lehrman established the Trust Project as an international collaboration to address media trust and news industry standards. Before focusing on media reform, Lehrman worked as a reporter covering medicine and science, earning honors such as a Peabody Award, a duPont-Columbia Award, and the John S. Knight Fellowship, with bylines in Scientific American, Nature, Health, and the public radio documentary series "The DNA Files," distributed by NPR. She also served as director of Santa Clara University's journalism ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

The Trust Project is an international consortium involving more than 100 news organizations working toward greater transparency and accountability in the global news industry, including The Economist, Folha de São Paulo, The Globe and Mail, La Repubblica, Il Sole 24 Ore, and La Stampa. Lehrman initiated the project by exploring how technology could support news trustworthiness and integrity, leading to the development of the Trust Indicators, which are now adopted by hundreds of news partners and leading digital platforms. Following the project's launch, Facebook, Google, and Twitter began deploying trust indicator symbols to help users assess content reliability and combat misinformation.

Lehrman's career centers on journalism ethics, diversity, and public accountability. She has advocated for journalism values and diverse voices as a leader in the Society of Professional Journalists, the SPJ Foundation, and organizations such as the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. Her scholarly work includes the co-edited volume "Reporting Inequality: Tools and Methods for Covering Race and Ethnicity" and the book "News in a New America," which examines inclusivity in U.S. news media. Lehrman is also affiliated with the UC Santa Cruz Center for Science and Justice as Science and Justice Professor.

Lehrman is recognized as an expert and speaker on building a trustworthy press. She has received honors such as the Gold Globee as Female Achiever/Communicator of the Year, recognition as a Top 20 Digital Innovator, and the Conference Board's Fellows Award. The Knight Commission's report on democracy and trust cited the Trust Project as a model for establishing common transparency standards in the news industry. Lehrman emphasizes that earning public trust is central to journalism, a principle guiding her ongoing work in media accountability and integrity.