Public opinion of journalism will be its end: a warning and a promise

By Ethan Bloomfield 

eb348519@ohio.edu

Image by Allsides

How often has your Dad or Grandpa told you that journalism isn't what it used to be, lamenting the "good ol' days" of Walter Cronkite and Peter Jennings? How often have government officials criticized news media and perverted by political grifters for the world to see? Unfortunately, a damaging aspect of this rhetoric runs far more profound than any given president thinks - the people's perception of news media - an outlet to keep the people informed - has plummeted to an unprecedented level of distrust in the last five years. The statistics don't lie: a Poynter analysis in June 2021 found that only 29% of surveyed Americans trust the news, which is two percentage points lower than Taiwan and a whopping 16 percentage points lower than Canada. This fact is not only a profoundly alarming number, but a number that tells the story journalists may not want to tell - that the country is turning against the news. 

It is not by mistake, however. The news and its trustworthiness have been vilified by talking heads, religious and political leaders, and government officials in a way never seen before over the last five years. This nostalgia for news of years long gone is not without merit, either - the 24-hour news cycle, rampant partisanship among newsmakers and news-watchers, and the ongoing and endlessly tiring COVID-19 pandemic have soured many to the importance of news in 2022. This belief led many over the years to rebel against the media establishment and either partake in increasingly polarized content or reject news media. People favor uninformed and unregulated social media like Facebook for news, regardless of known harm caused to the overall trust in media and government in the first place.

This mistrust has seeped into the hearts and minds of many Americans. "The media is biased," some might say, unaware that bias and reporting on conscience is a part of journalism. Bias is unavoidable, and objectivity is not always the right way. In The Elements of Journalism, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel write that "the method is objective, not the journalist." This philosophy should permeate what journalism is to highlight the human limits of objectivity. Yet, as journalists, we are held to some impossible standard to give "all sides a chance" and report "neutral, unbiased content" by the people we serve. As a journalism student, I am privy to this insider knowledge on bias and objectivity in an acute fashion. The facts are that, through misinformation, ignorance, or otherwise, people don't have a collective understanding of how journalism works. The American Press Institute in 2018 presented a number of statistics highlighting how journalists are overwhelmingly skeptical of the public's knowledge of crucial journalism terms like "source," "attribution," or "op-ed." Additionally, the piece highlights a group's dissonance for terms like "fake news," unable to agree upon what the phrase even means. 

As journalists of the present and future, it is our moral and ethical responsibility to be more explicit, level-headed, and above all, transparent. We owe it to the people to explain the technicalities of complex journalistic concepts, be upfront about bias and show that bias is not a dirty word in journalism, and gain the American people's trust once again. If not, the future of journalism as we know it will be in peril - because it already is.