The 2018 Poynter Media Trust Survey revealed that while trust in the media had fallen from 72 percent since the Watergate scandal in 1972, hitting a low of 35 percent in 2016, it has rebounded in the last two years to 53 percent overall. Specifically, 76 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in local television news and 73 percent for local newspapers. By comparison, only 59 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in national newspapers, 55 percent for network news, 47 percent for online news and 22 percent for news on social media.
According to a recent Pew Research Study, while most Americans trust national news organizations to present facts, 74 percent believe these national news organizations are biased toward one side or the other.
The problem most news consumers have with “the media” is not necessarily the content, but the way that news material is presented.
When CNN first began as a cable news network in 1980, it was simply news broadcasts. There was a dearth of news during the slower parts of the day when the news cycles around the world were quiet, forcing the new network to come up with more innovative ways to entice readers to remain engaged, by adding commentary and punditry to comment on news stories.
News is not like a sports game or ongoing congressional hearings. With most news stories there are no constant, hours-long roll of new data, quotes and facts coming every minute, conducive to a live television broadcast.
Most news stories come in bursts — a traffic accident, a natural disaster, a shooting, a revelatory announcement or politician’s statement are over in minutes — and it can often take hours or days for officials and agencies to respond or release statements or reports, which also come in short bursts for news consumers. Trying to fill that space in between while keeping viewers engaged with the news story is an agonizing proposition.
Yet the big three cable news networks — CNN, Fox News and MSNBC — do so by spending most of their days vacillating between the actual news presentation by journalists and commentary on those news stories by pundits, editorialists and experts. The problem is the cable news networks have done a terrible job explaining the difference to their audiences, eroding the idea that news can and should be presented without bias.
The big names in cable news are not unbiased journalists, but commentators, so it’s no wonder news consumers think all members of “the media” are biased — the cable news folks are biased by intention and design.
In print, we clearly identify our editorial space by confining it to Page 4A and printing “Opinion” on the top so there is no confusion between opinion and news.
Among the Big Three national nightly newscasts networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — editorial commentary is reserved for the end of the broadcast.
The vast majority of print, radio and local journalists are not pundits, but reporters. They attend the events readers, listeners and viewers can not and simply report what occurred and what news sources say.
While television and cable news is thought to be biased by most news consumers, local, regional and national newspapers are still viewed as the most reliable source for accurate and unbiased information. Roughly 70 percent of Americans get daily news from a newspaper, whether in print, online or via their mobile devices.
According to news consultant Kevin Slimp, who presents annually at the Arizona Newspapers Association convention, roughly three-quarters of newspapers in the United States are independently owned or part of small newspaper groups, like Larson Newspapers, which publishes exclusively in Sedona and the Verde Valley.
These newspaper owners nationwide report that revenues are steady and subscriptions are slightly up as more news consumers rely on local news sources for the stories that matter to them and trust what they read. These consumers may still get their national news from cable or broadcast networks they may distrust or consider biased, but still have faith their local newspapers will present facts truthfully and without slant.
Thank you, dear readers, for your continued, loyal readership. You are why we proudly do what we do.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
