‘Trust’ in the News Media Has Come to Mean Affirmation

Brooke Gladstone

Brooke Gladstone is the co-host and managing editor of WNYC's “On the Media.” She is also the author of "The Influencing Machine."

Updated December 21, 2015, 3:00 PM

Trust in the news media is a sinking ship. Three-quarters of Americans trusted the news in the post-Watergate years, but, according to Gallup, that plummeted to 44 percent in 2004. Weirdly, it rebounded to 50 percent in 2005, but ever since its drifted gently downward. Why? What do the people want from the news?

Americans say they want accuracy and impartiality, but polls suggest what most of us want is to hear what we believe.

Americans say they want accuracy and impartiality, but the polls suggest that, actually, most of us are seeking affirmation. Americans want the news to be patriotic, which explains the big drop in 2004 when stories abounded about Abu Ghraib, the 9/11 commission’s slam on the government’s handling of terrorism, and the Senate Intelligence Committee finding that the White House “overstated” the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Plus, it was an election year. Trust in news media always dips in election years.

The news media is most valued when it reflects our best selves, which explains that pop up in 2005. Often, the coverage of Hurricane Katrina was wildly inaccurate, but reporters (especially on TV) used their airtime to yell at the authorities, expressing our collective pain, and shame. Yay, Anderson Cooper! Yay, Shepherd Smith! We trust you!

But more important, the Internet has changed society's relationship with the news. For one thing, it’s enabled us to construct digital silos, battlements from which, like the French in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, we fire invective on the people below.

Some news organizations base their business models on denouncing “mainstream media." A particular example is the top-rated Fox News channel, which flogs its “outsider” status. True, the political right has claimed victimization by news media since at least Nixon, but that 45-year defamation campaign reached peak force when the Internet shrank the public square.

But there is ample proof that the Internet has also really “leveled the playing field” between the most powerful and the least. Now the marginalized can speedily gather, demand recognition and challenge the prevailing narratives. This happens every day and it’s far better than the alternative.

Let’s not forget that most institutional entities have taken a public opinion hit. Public faith in organized religion has dipped to 42 percent, the Supreme Court to 30 percent, the presidency to 29 percent, the banks to 26 percent, big business to 21 percent and Congress, to 7 percent. By that measure, news media is doing pretty well. (Not TV or Internet exclusive news — that’s in the teens.) But essentially the crisis, if there is one, is elsewhere — everywhere.


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Topics: Politics, journalism, media

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