Report: Trust in journalism has hit all-time low

By Breeanna Hare and C.C. Song, Daily Staff Reporters March 17, 2005

Trust in journalism has hit new lows, according to the second annual State of the Media Report.

Published by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the report showed that in the past 17 years, the public has come to see the press as self-serving and discreditable. The number of those who thought the press was highly professional fell from 72 percent to 49 percent, while the number of those who thought the press covered-up its mistakes rose from 13 percent to 67 percent.

This lack of trust has translated into a decline in readership as the State of the Media also showed. According to the report, the number of newspaper readers has fallen from its height, 75 percent in 1992, to 60 percent in 2004, due to distrust and other factors.

People cannot trust the news if they do not respect it, and this has been a long-term trend, said former CNN and Newsweek journalist and Communication Studies Prof. Anthony Collings.

“The problem is that news organizations underestimate their audience; they believe they have to dumb it down. This may increase the numbers, but it will decrease the respect for the news,” Collings said.

Brent Cunningham, the managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, a magazine that is associated with Columbia University, said the increasing popularity of the Internet has contributed to the decrease in newspaper readership.

“I think (reporters) today cherry-pick facts and ignore the arguments that are in the way. The other thing is that the people have disengaged from serious media in this country. Technology has allowed us to isolate ourselves and be selective in terms of media, agree with what we observe and disagree with what we don’t observe,” Cunningham said. “

He added that there is also long-term distrust in journalists.

“I think polls for the last 20 years have shown the public increasingly less trustful of the press, and I think the reasons for it are many and complicated and it’s not always just the journalists’ fault — although press has done a lot to shoot ourselves in the foot, not just CBS, not Jayson Blair, all the way back to Janet Cooke case in 1980.”

Jayson Blair of The New York Times was fired for plagiarism and fabrication. CBS’s production, “60 Minutes,” broke a fabricated story on President Bush’s military record. In addition, Dan Rather’was also criticized for swaying the audience towards a political bias. Janet Cooke of The Washington Post made up a story about a boy named Jimmy, supposedly an 8-year-old heroin addict that generated controversy.

Michigan State University Communications Prof. Howard Bossen believes the recent national decline in the trust of newspaper journalism affects everyone, including students on college campuses.

Bossen also said that while there is no single reason why the public is losing trust in the media, he believes it can partly be attributed to the variety of news sources that have become available.

“Students need to pay more attention to the media in general. When I ask my students if they watched ‘60 Minutes,’ relatively few hands go up,” he said. “We have a big confusion in society about what is news and what are ‘talking heads’ masquerading as news,” said Bossen.