In Press We Mistrust
Americans are becoming increasingly distrustful of the press. Or maybe the press doesn't trust us?
As news has become big business, and increasingly tailored to attract politically homogenous audiences, public confidence in the media has plummeted.
Do you trust the media? Your answer may depend on whether your identify as a Democrat, Independent or Republican, or if you're a baby boomer or a millennial, or if you get your news from NPR, or CNN, or Fox.
But according to a recent Gallup poll, most Americans don’t.
“The 32% of Americans who say they trust the mass media ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ to report the news in a full, fair and accurate way,” reports Gallup, “ties Gallup’s lowest historical reading, previously recorded in 2016.”
Depending on your political affiliation, however, you are likely to think very differently about the news media. “Democrats’ confidence in the mass media has consistently outpaced Republicans’,” Gallup found, “but the latest gap of 47 points is the narrowest since 2016. Democrats’ trust in the media has fallen 12 points over the past year, to 58%, and compares with 11% among Republicans and 29% among independents.”
Diversity in the workplace, but not the news.
A week or so ago the news website The Free Press, run by former New York Times journalist Bari Weiss (and fellow Substacker), published a blockbuster missive from a now ex-NPR editor, claiming that NPR had lost America’s trust by telling its listeners and readers what to think, rather then reporting the news.
“It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent,” editor Uri Berliner wrote, “but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding. “
That, says Berliner, has changed. “Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.”
While aggressively pursuing DEI policies internally, Berliner says NPR has fallen victim to another kind of discrimination. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the NPR’s mission became not to report the news, but to report news that would put an end to “America’s infestation with systemic racism…Our mission,” Berliner recalled, “was to change it.”
From then on, the “news” NPR reported, according to Berliner, was not intended to inform, but to conform listeners to the NPR worldview. “And this, I believe,” concluded Berliner, “is the most damaging development at NPR: the absence of viewpoint diversity.”
Sadly, we have come a long, and wrong, way since the days of Walter Cronkite and McNeil-Leher – when most Americans, regardless of their political leanings, had confidence that the news was reported fairly, accurately, and without political agenda. As news has become big business, and become increasingly tailored to attract politically homogenous audiences, trust in the media has plummeted.
Why are we so angry?
Because they want us to be. "Media organizations currently operate on a business model that seeks to make us angry at the ‘other side',” according to the media bias rating website AllSides.com, “in order to cultivate a partisan customer base, contributing to the increasing polarization seen in society today.” As New York Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens wrote, “Democracy may die in darkness, as The Washington Post’s grandiloquent motto has it. But The Post will die if it can’t sell subscriptions and ads.”
Not only is the business of news changing with the advent of “news-only” outlets like Fox and CNN, that seek to create conflict, but also where and how people get their news. The changes are particularly evident among younger Americans.
The Pew Research Center reports that “half of 18- to 29-year-olds in the United States say they have some or a lot of trust in the information they get from social media sites,” while “Adults in all other age groups remain considerably less likely to trust information from social media sites than information from national and local news outlets.”
The "truth," you can't handle the FOCNN truth!
The pressure to appeal to partisan audiences isn’t the only driver of biased reporting. Journalists are actually being taught and encouraged to abandon objective reporting in favor of reporting that aligns with their personal “objectivity” and identity -- their personal truth. But isn't that what editorials and op-eds are for?
“Amid all the profound challenges and changes roiling the American news media today,” former Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. wrote in a Post guest essay, “newsrooms are debating whether traditional objectivity should still be the standard for news reporting.”
“Increasingly, reporters, editors and media critics argue that the concept of journalistic objectivity is a distortion of reality…”
“Increasingly, reporters, editors and media critics argue that the concept of journalistic objectivity is a distortion of reality,” according to Downie, “They point out that the standard was dictated over decades by male editors in predominantly White newsrooms and reinforced their own view of the world…they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”
In a report published by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, the authors caution that “Newsroom leaders are confronting a generation of increasingly diverse young journalists struggling to reconcile traditional news standards with their concepts of ‘cultural context,’ ‘identity,’ ‘point of view,’ and ‘advocacy journalism.’”
The newsroom, concludes the report, must “move beyond accuracy to truth,” and “unlock the real power of diversity, inclusion and identity.” Move beyond accuracy to truth?
Facts? What about them?
And what about "facts"? Facts, according to the Cronkite School report, “aren’t necessarily the whole truth,” and journalists are asked to avoid “lazy or mindless ‘balance’ or ‘both-sides-ism,’” and instead report the “truth.” Which begs the question, who’s truth? The writers? The readers? The publishers? Walter Cronkite must be spinning in his grave.
“Objectivity is not even possible,” Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief of ProPublica, the national investigative journalism nonprofit funded by George Soros told the authors of “Beyond Objectivity,” “I don’t even know what it means.” And here I thought most journalists had dictionaries.
Is it any wonder American’s don’t trust the media anymore? Perhaps that's the problem, journalists and the mainstream news media don't trust news consumers to come to the right conclusions -- so opinion must be disguised as fact. "Objectivity does not require that journalists be blank slates free of bias," author Alex Jones wrote in an essay for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, "In fact, objectivity is necessary precisely because they are biased."
My “truth” may not be the same as yours. Therein lies the difference between news and opinion. News should be about verifiable facts. Opinion uses facts as evidence in order to draw a conclusion or make a point. “Sound news reporting is based in facts, impartially gathered and fearlessly presented. It relies on objective, baseline truths that are knowable,” according to Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Matt Murray,” Great reporters are curious, skeptical, challenging, open, empathetic and genuinely impartial—and go where the facts lead.”
“We are not in the ‘truth’ business, at least not the sort with a capital ‘T’,” argues the Times’ Stephens, “Our job is to collect and present relevant facts and good evidence. Beyond that, truth quickly becomes a matter of personal interpretation, ‘lived experience,’ moral judgments and other subjective considerations that affect all journalists but that should not frame their coverage.”
When the reporting of facts and a reporter’s desire to report “truth” clash, there can be real world consequences. Take, for example, the New York Times and BBC’s reporting on the Gaza hospital explosion. Both of their initial reports relied on unverified rumors and accusations from Hamas, and in the case of the BBC, outright speculation – implying that the explosion was caused by an Israeli bomb or missile. It was also widely reported that there were as many as 500 casualties, which turned out to be wildly exaggerated.
Both had to walk those reports back. The Times issued what amounted to a public confession, admitting that they, “left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was.” After a BBC reporter all but accused Israel (wrongly) of bombing the hospital during a live broadcast, BBC management apologized, acknowledging that “it was wrong to speculate in this way.”
By then the damage was done. A planned meeting between President Biden and Arab leaders was cancelled after Israel was falsely accused of bombing the hospital, and the misleading reporting set off a firestorm of anti-Israeli protests throughout the Arab world as well as condemnations from some members of the US Congress.
Slanted, or sloppy, reporting can become part of the story, influencing events instead of chronicling them. “We are not simply disinterested defenders of democracy writ large,” according to the Times’ Brett Stephens, “We are actors within that democracy, with a powerful megaphone that we can sometimes use in problematic ways.”
Don't buy a used car from a journalist.
Perhaps one reason that American’s have lost confidence in the media is that they have lost confidence in journalists. According to another Gallup poll, 42% of Americans “think journalists have ‘very low’ or ‘low’ ethical standards,” about the same as used car salesmen. Note to self: Don't by a used car from a journalist. Only about a quarter of American’s believe that journalists have high ethical standards, and if you don’t trust the messenger, you won’t trust the message.
"Journalists in the United States differ markedly from the general public in their views of “bothsidesism,” reports the Pew Research Center, "whether journalists should always strive to give equal coverage to all sides of an issue." According to Pew, "A little more than half of the journalists surveyed (55%) say that every side does not always deserve equal coverage in the news. By contrast, 22% of Americans overall say the same, whereas about three-quarters (76%) say journalists should always strive to give all sides equal coverage." This disparity is even more pronounced among younger journalists, 63% of whom say every side does not always deserve equal coverage.
Particularly telling are the attitudes between journalists who work for left-leaning versus right-leaning news organizations. "Overall," Pew reports, "57% of those who say their outlet has a right-leaning audience think the profession should strive for equal coverage," while "For journalists who say their outlet’s audience leans left, the trend is reversed, with 30% supporting equal coverage for all sides and a large majority (69%) saying it is not always deserved." Is it any wonder that right-leaning American's have markedly less confidence in the media than those that lean left?
All the News that's fit...for you.
Yet another reason is that American news consumers are increasingly siloed into “filter bubbles.” A filter, or “news,” bubble occurs, according to AllSides, " when someone is only exposed to news that confirms his or her beliefs, or solely interacts with like-minded peers.” Social media platforms and search engines, for example, use proprietary algorithms intended to provide users with information that precisely aligns with their political preferences. Mainstream news organizations, like Fox and CNN, also court their audiences by tailoring what news they report, and how they report it, to their consumer's preferences.
While that helps explain the public’s lack of trust in the media in general, how do we explain the dramatic differences between Democrats, Republicans, and Independents? “Liberal news sources get visited far more often than conservative outlets,” reports Allsides, “outlets we rate as Lean Left and Center accounted for the majority of online news traffic. Meanwhile, outlets rated Left and Lean Left got roughly 375 million more site visits than Lean Right and Right outlets in July 2022, demonstrating their greater influence on the media landscape.”
This disparity might also be due to more “left-leaning” than “right-leaning” options for news consumers. “Dominance of Lean Left outlets comes in part from the lack of Lean Right outlets,” reports Allsides, “While major news sources may happen to see things from a more liberal perspective, sources that promote conservative perspectives often do so intentionally — thus allowing their biases to become more overt.”
And not only are there more “left-leaning” news options, there are also more “left-leaning” journalists. According to a study by Indiana University, the “percentage of full-time U.S. journalists who claim to be Republican dropped from 26% in 1971, to 18 percent in 2002, to 7.1 percent in 2013.
This decline tracks closely to the precipitous drop in trust in news media, particularly by Republicans and Independents, since the 1970’s. And as we noted earlier, journalists working for left-leaning news organizations are less inclined to think that good journalism requires telling both sides of a story. It's likely no coincidence that more left-leaning media, with reporting by more left-leaning journalists, telling more one-sided stories, has eroded Republican's and Independent's trust in the media.
So why do more Democrats trust the news than Republicans and Independents? Likely because more media leans left and reports left-leaning news. It's easier for Democrats to find news that suits their social and political views, and more difficult for Republicans and Independents. And in order to provide a clear alternative, right-leaning news tends to be more obviously partisan.
Has Fiction become Truth?
The disparity in news options between the left and the right, the abandonment of the principle of “objectivity” by journalists, the shift left by journalists themselves, and the commercialization of news, have all contributed in increasing mistrust of the news media. “But if you still believe that a healthy democracy depends on the quality and credibility of information with which our society makes its choices,” the Times’ Stephens concluded, “then we have few better models than the kind of objective journalism that is now going out of fashion.”
"When you mix fiction and news," the journalist and political commenter Bill Moyers warned, "you diminish the distinction between truth and fiction, and you wear down the audience's own discriminating power to judge." So be skeptical, and you be the judge.