Last week, Gallup published a poll that showed Americans don’t have much confidence in the media. Only 54% of Democrats, 27% of independents, and 12% of Republicans trust “mass media,” defined by Gallup as “newspapers, TV and radio," when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly.
Well, there’s one problem. Define accurately and fairly. Those are subjective terms often pasted into mission statements to project the embrace of journalistic morality and high standards. But do they have any meaning when so many outlets report the news through filters that seem to exclusively favor one side of the political divide? Perhaps that’s why the public is increasingly disaffected.
So how much longer can these behemoths survive as the public’s confidence in them dwindles? Is this just a trendy three-year low, a prolonged hiccup, something big media will one day look back on and laugh about – or is this a long, ungraceful descent into oblivion?
Maimed Media
A time existed when the purpose of journalism was, one might argue, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth – no matter who it offended or which party might look bad in the process. But nowadays, as Thomas Sowell once wrote, “Too many people in the media cannot seem to tell the difference between reporting the news and creating propaganda.” Also unhelpful is that “[i]n some venues,” wrote Politico’s Jack Shafer, “reporters now do their work with all the passion of an accountant, and it shows in their guarded, couched and equivocating copy.”
However, mass media is up against a culture that apparently cultivated countless ideologues dedicated to reading, viewing, and producing only content affirming their beliefs. Use the wrong word or positively depict an official the target audience despises, and many will simply find another news source that corroborates their worldview. On the other hand, the increasing lack of trust might be the media’s own doing. “By 2016 we'd raised a generation of viewers who had no conception of politics as an activity that might or should involve compromise,” wrote veteran journalist Matt Taibbi in his book Hate, Inc. “Your team either won or lost, and you felt devastated or vindicated accordingly. We were training rooters instead of readers.” Powerful evidence of Taibbi's point could be found in the recent decisions by The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times not to endorse a presidential candidate. Their readers went ballistic, with tens of thousands immediately canceling their subscriptions and several editors resigning.
(Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)
Perhaps mass media turned to unorthodox methods because many outlets have struggled to thrive ever since the internet changed how people consume news. Several publications over the last decade have shut down. Others resorted to layoffs to stay afloat. In 2023 alone, as The New Yorker highlighted in February, there were 2,681 layoffs “in broadcast, print, and digital news media. NBC News, Vox Media, Vice News, Business Insider, Spotify, theSkimm, FiveThirtyEight, The Athletic, and Condé Nast … all made significant layoffs. BuzzFeed News closed, as did Gawker.” The Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, and The Wall Street Journal also let numerous people go. This probably won’t be the last time a slew of publications and networks has to slim down their staff to save money, but how many lives do these organizations have?
Then there’s cable news. Viewership for some networks is declining, too, except for Fox News, which, in 2022, maintained an average audience of more than two million viewers, according to Pew Research Center. (The average is determined by the “number of TVs tuned to a program throughout a time period.”) CNN and MSNBC hovered just above 800,000, nearly 200,000 less than in 2021. Of those three networks, Fox was the only one to grow its audience between 2021 and 2022, and its programs continue to dominate ratings among cable news.
Will Public Trust Rebound?
It doesn't seem likely the media will regain that trust, either. You see, it’s not only the press in which people have lost faith. Fewer than 50% of Americans have confidence in the federal government. In fact, the only institution people trust less than televised news is Congress. Every year Americans grow increasingly negative about the medical system, public schools, the criminal justice system, and the Supreme Court, to name a few. But, importantly, 79% of US adults believe Americans have too little confidence in one another, according to Pew’s last survey on personal trust. This speaks to a much larger problem, and it doesn’t look promising for media. Then again, do these outlets even need the public’s trust to thrive?
“We've discovered we can sell hate,” wrote Taibbi, “and the more vituperative the rhetoric, the better. This also serves larger political purposes. So long as the public is busy hating each other and not aiming its ire at the more complex financial and political processes going on off-camera, there's very little danger of anything like a popular uprising … Hate is a great blinding mechanism.”
Maybe news outlets don’t need the public’s trust at all. Americans who remain distracted or outraged might not consider whether their content comes from a trustworthy source. Besides, just because some say they have little confidence in the media doesn’t mean they won’t digest on a regular basis whatever their favorite sources provide. As long as what they read and watch allows them to say, “I knew I was right,” many will likely remain loyal customers.
