Article Why doesn’t anyone trust the legacy media? (information community)

[C C]

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/why-...journalism

EXCERPTS: The challenges facing the establishment media are more severe today than ever before. Trust in the press is at a record low... [...] All of this raises pressing questions: In an era of declining trust, industry collapse, and technological disruption, does the media, as we’ve historically understood it, have a future? [...] Harper’s Magazine invited four leading media observers to grapple with these questions...

[...] I’m not sure that there’s a correlation between the mistakes the media has made and the distrust the public feels toward it... [...] I also think that it’s part of a broader institutional mistrust. If you look at the decline of trust in American institutions, it is overwhelmingly connected to the dynamics of local relationships...

[...] The editor of the local newspaper, the reporter people are familiar with, the family physician who has taken care of you and your siblings -- these figures have credibility in a way that large national institutions do not. Americans have never trusted large national institutions...

[...] I think we’re overlooking some important context here, which is that trust was the highest when the media really couldn’t be trusted. Gallup data on media trust goes back only to the early Seventies. Yet we know that in the Sixties, trust in the media was incredibly high. And we know from history that in the Fifties and the early Sixties, newspapers were not telling the whole story... [...] So I actually think that the decline of trust has to do with newspapers’ becoming more responsible, more accurate. Nobody I know would trade today’s newspaper for one from 1960...

[...] I would add that people have unreasonable expectations about science ever being settled. Obama sometimes used to cite something and say, “The debate is settled,” when, in fact, there’s no such thing as settled science...

[...] So we have an industry facing multiple crises: it isn’t widely trusted, it’s perceived as too weak to defend itself, and even its own backers are wavering. And now it must contend with another disruption: artificial intelligence... (MORE - missing details)

[Magical Realist]

I don't have any doubts about the reliability of the media. I pretty much accept the veracity of what they are reporting. My distrust comes from the suspicion that the same conglomerates always trying to take our money from us are the same ones who own the media. So its selection of stories always reflects that perhaps unconscious capitalist agenda. We only hear about things that grab our attention and keep us glued to the set. Information as a consumed commodity for the hungry masses. Sponsored and brought to you by whomever.

[Yazata]

The challenges facing the establishment media are more severe today than ever before. Trust in the press is at a record low...Harper’s Magazine invited four leading media observers to grapple with these questions...

Are "leading media observers" really the right people to ask? These "observers" appear more like media-apologists than objective media-observers. There's the dean of the Columbia University journalism school who also writes for the New Yorker. There's a writer for Politico, Reuters and Slate. There's a writer for Semafor. And there's Taylor Lorenz, formerly with the New York Times and the Washington Post, who proved too radical even for WaPo and now calls herself an independent journalist.

Wouldn't it make more sense to ask the people who distrust the media why they feel that way? Like maybe some regular Americans who have tuned out the establishment media and get much of their news from X and places like that? Not just another collection of prominent New York City media names?

[...] I’m not sure that there’s a correlation between the mistakes the media has made and the distrust the public feels toward it... [...]

The media's problem is that their bias is so visible for all to see. The public (not just Republicans either) can see with their own eyes that the media aren't just reporting what happened, but instead are trying to promote a "narrative" that supposedly puts what's happening into an interpretive context. And often the "analysis" and "commentary" that takes up most of the airtime or the printed page, consists of little more than defense of democratic party talking points.

Newsrooms and editorial meetings (disproportionately in the same New York City that just elected Mamdani) are filled with political activists who are very aware of the power to influence the thinking of millions nationwide that their jobs give them. So they tell themselves, 'Why not use this wonderful opportunity to promote the progressive social change agendas that we all believe in?' As they say in the New York Times editorial conference, "This is where we set the nation's agenda".

I also think that it’s part of a broader institutional mistrust.

Maybe, but the distrust is even worse with the media. Most institutions don't wear their biases on their sleeves the way that the "journalistic profession" does. People trust airline pilots, mechanical engineers and brain surgeons a lot more than they do newspaper writers.

[...] I think we’re overlooking some important context here, which is that trust was the highest when the media really couldn’t be trusted. Gallup data on media trust goes back only to the early Seventies. Yet we know that in the Sixties, trust in the media was incredibly high.

Partly because journalism really was better back then. And partly because the public used to be a lot more trusting and naive, willing to believe what they were told. So the question is why has that changed? A lot of bad experiences. The growing chasm between the people and the journalists has largely been the fault of the journalists, I think.

I, for one, consider it a positive change. We are told over and over that we must practice 'critical thinking'. Well, that basically means 'Don't automatically believe everything you are told'. Be on the watch for people trying to mess with your head.

And 'journalists' are most definitely trying to mess with our heads.

[confused2]

I've been following this forum for several years - particularly Yazata's posts about current events. At no point did I detect any bias and assumed he was 'apolitical' - I was actually surprised (quite recently) to find that he isn't. The word that springs to mind is 'integrity' - a very rare commodity. On the one hand he is (in my experience) almost uniquely qualified to advise reliance on 'free speech' and on the other hand the way he stands out from the crowd kind of undermines the value of the advice.

Botox will make you beautiful. Is that better than looking like you've actually been lived in?