The Media on Trial
The news biz isn't what it used to be. But it might be becoming just that
These are, to say the least, unsettling times for the news biz. Not so long ago--in 1976, to be exact--about 7 out of 10 Americans trusted the press, a Gallup survey found. In the same year, the National Opinion Research Center reported that confidence in the news media was almost as high as the average level of confidence in other major U.S. institutions.
But then something happened. While respect for those other institutions has remained, on average, about the same, it has fallen sharply for the press. Today, according to a Pew Research Center study, 53 percent of Americans just plain don't trust what news organizations report. And if that doesn't sound bad enough, a 2002 American Bar Association survey found that the only profession inspiring less public confidence than its own was--guess whose? "The public sees the media as self-centered and self-promoting," says veteran media watcher Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, "a watchdog that barks too much."
Lack of confidence takes many forms, of course. Turn on the radio or TV just about anytime these days, and you'll hear the high and mighty and hoi polloi inveighing against media bias, incompetence, or irrelevance. It might be Laura Bush telling Bill O'Reilly on Fox News that the media "sensationalizes or magnifies things that really shouldn't be." Or it could be a string of irate callers on a liberal Pacifica radio talk show denouncing a craven Washington press corps that goes along with everything the administration says.
An old American pastime, media bashing acquired new intensity earlier this summer when Vice President Cheney slammed the New York Times and other national news media for misrepresenting a 9/11 commission report on connections between al Qaeda and Iraq. Calling their work "irresponsible" and "lazy," Cheney charged that it was motivated, in part, by "malicious reasons." From their redoubts at Fox News and throughout talk-radio land, conservative pundits quickly identified the source of that malice: the reflexive liberal bias that they say runs rampant in America's big newsrooms.
Both sides of the story. Hold on, say voices from the left: What about the credulous treatment the same "newspaper of record" and other major outlets gave to the administration's major justification for the Iraq war? (Yes, those elusive weapons of mass destruction that still haven't been found.) Wasn't that proof the national press still truckles to the powers that be, no matter how many people in the newsrooms call themselves "liberal" ? Even critics within the national press--Daniel Okrent, the public editor of the New York Times, and Howard Kurtz, media reporter at the Washington Post --castigated their news organizations for either ignoring or downplaying possible holes in the administration's WMD argument.
Then again, maybe dissatisfaction with the media is not really so much a matter of partisan bias. After all, Democratic pols say their guys receive just as harsh treatment from the mainstream press as the Republicans do. Bill Clinton got the journalistic equivalent of the full-body frisk many times over. And how often did we have to hear about Howard Dean's scream? "So-called conservatives and so-called liberals are both railing against the media," says Prof. Joseph Turow of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
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