Trust in the news media wasn’t always as low as it is today, and it didn’t disappear all at once. Here, we examine just some of the reasons why trust declined.
Attacks on journalism
by Matthew Skillman and Deborah Potter. January 17, 2018, was a special day for President Donald Trump. He tweeted a link to GOP.com, the Republican Party’s main political website, which ...
Bad behavior
By Maddie Vincent. ESPN reporter Britt McHenry was suspended for a week in 2015 after insulting a towing lot attendant. In a tweet, McHenry apologized for regrettable things she said, ...
Blurring the lines
by Walter Pfau. Depending on who you ask, you’ll get different answers to the question, “Can Americans tell the difference between news and opinion?” Fox News host Sean Hannity believes they ...
Getting it wrong
By Callahan Peel. Seth Rich was found dead near his home on July 10, 2016, with two bullet wounds in his chest. Two weeks later, Wikileaks released thousands of internal ...
Fragmentation
By Beau Baker. News anchor Walter Cronkite was said to be the “most trusted man in America” during his time at the helm of CBS’s Evening News. He cut a ...
Polarization
By Matt Roberts. Ever since Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic, has been claiming that America has been watching two different movies ...
Remoteness
by Alina Sturgess. As journalists strive to regain the public’s trust, one trend they must take into account is their own remoteness. Newsrooms in general lack racial and ethnic diversity, ...