A deeply depressing chart on the future of media

Oomph.

As a sort of social experiment, I sometimes wear a sweatshirt — that CNN bought its employees a few years ago — when I am out running errands.

This is the sweatshirt (it’s made by RAYGUN):

What’s fascinating about wearing it is that it never fails to elicit reactions. A few people nod their head in agreement when they see the message on the sweatshirt. But lots more give me a look that is some mix between incredulity and annoyance.

Look. Working at CNN for the last four years has left me well aware that there is a VERY healthy distrust of the mainstream media. But, peoples’ visceral reaction to a slogan on a sweatshirt still surprises me. It’s like, for at least some of them, I am rubbing their noses in, well, poop.

Which brings me to new polling from the Knight Foundation and Gallup on the media — and, specifically, how people feel toward it.

And this chart, which I will talk about more below:

So, here’s what somewhere between a plurality and a majority of the public believes:

• The media has the resources to cover the stories fairly and accurately

• They not only don’t do that but they actively “intend to mislead, misinform and persuade” the public.

• News organizations do not care about the people who consume their content

That’s really a triple whammy of bad!

If I had to pick the worst finding in that chart, it’s the fact that people believe that the media is actively working to mislead the people who are watching and reading. What that says to me is that people don’t just think reporters are dumb (a long-established criticism) but that they are ill-intended too. Mistakes or perceived bias isn’t a bug; it’s a feature.

That, to me, is a change in peoples’ perception over let’s say the last decade or so. Anti-media sentiment has been around for as long as there’s been media. But this notion that the media is somehow part of a broader attempt to withhold facts, misinform and mislead people is new.

It’s not hard to trace where it comes from. While Donald Trump didn’t originate the idea of a media adversarial to Republicans, he certainly perfected it as a messaging tool for his presidential aspirations.

Conservative media has echoed it. Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News, for example, is larded with segments that all have a similar theme: The media is purposely not telling you the truth as a way to further their own nefarious goals. (Those goals according to Carlson are, um, woke socialism — or something.)

(The revelations, published Thursday, about what some of Fox’s most prominent primetime hosts actually believed about the 2020 election and Donald Trump’s claims of fraud are a telling indicator that the network is engaged in fan service, not actual journalism.)

The simple fact is that one of the major parties in this country has put undermining the media at the core of its platform. It’s hard not to see that reality as at least partly responsible for the incredibly low numbers in the Knight/Gallup data.

That’s not to say the media doesn’t bear some blame. We do! Not everyone is in journalism for the right reasons. There are bad apples. And even good reporters make mistakes, miscalculations or just miss something they shouldn’t miss.

But, those facts don’t change this one: A society with a free and independent media is a much stronger society. The erosion of trust in the press — wherever its origins — poses an existential threat to democracy.

Unfortunately, we are already further down that road than we should be. And it’s currently in the political interests of the Republican party to push the idea that the media can’t be trusted.

What’s the solution? In the short term, I have no idea. In the long term, it’s a commitment to transparency in journalism — showing our work so that people know they can have faith in it. Maybe.