News Media Has Lost Americans' Trust

Media elites, chafing under withering criticism from President Trump and his spokespersons, are infuriated over attacks impugning the integrity of news reporting.  News execs are pitching a temper tantrum, calling the vilificaton an assault on the First Amendment guarantee of a free press.

There's nothing unusual about an adversarial relationship between the media and White House, but the current environment is toxic.  Hostilities recently escalated into a fiery war of words over testy White House press briefings and the heckling of a CNN reporter at a Trump campaign rally.

Newspaper editors and television officials are framing the issue as an altruistic battle over a free and open press versus  government censorship. But their real motive is less magnanimous.  News organizations are trying to salvage their already tattered public standing, which has sunk to new lows.

A 2016 Pew Research study found that only 18 percent of Americans have a "a lot of trust" in national newspaper, television and radio news media.  In a poll last year, Gallup reported that only 32 percent of adults have a "great deal" or "fair" amount of trust in the news media.

These are historic troughs for the news media.  However, it is hardly breaking news.  There has been a steady erosion in public opinion of the integrity of the news media over the last 20 years, stretching back to 1997.  The downdraft did not begin with the election of Donald Trump.

In fact, an exhaustive study commissioned by the American Society of Newspapers Editors in 1998 uncovered that 78 percent of respondents agreed there is "bias" in reporting.  A CBS News/New York Times poll in 2006 affirmed that only four in 10 adults believed news reports are truthful.

Those are alarming numbers for the news industry, which is suffering from dwindling newspaper readership, plummeting television viewership and tumbling radio ratings.  The news business' high-stakes struggle for survival is being undermined by its flagging public image.

News officials may be outraged by the labeling of their reporting as "fake news," but they have given their detractors plenty of ammunition.  There has been an epidemic of reporting that has proven to be false, misleading or deliberately biased.  Examples abound across all media.

After Mr. Trump's victory, reports circulated on social media and the news that multiple transgender teenagers had committed suicide in response to his election.  Even Snopes, an alleged fact-checking website, called the rumors "unconfirmed" rather than false.  Turns out the news was indeed a fraud.

Later in November, the New York Magazine claimed a group of computer scientists and election lawyers were demanding a recount in three states won by Mr. Trump.  The story was picked up by most media outlets.  No proof was ever produced by the so-called experts and the story was pulled.

Another bombshell that exploded in the media's faces was a report that a Muslim business owner flew to Iraq to bring his sick mother to America for medical treatment.  The woman supposedly died because her flight was delayed by the immigration ban.  The account was a total fabrication.

Associated Press reported that the House had voted to roll back Obama rules on background checks for gun ownership a year ago.  The news created hysteria on social media.  Some might call the story misleading but it was downright deceitful.  The House did no such thing.

For the record, the House repealed a narrow slice of the Obama era rule dealing with background checks for those with Social Security disability and adults receiving Supplemental Security Income.  Even the American Association for People with Disabilities and the ACLU supported the change.

CNN has earned the title of least trusted network for egregious bogus reporting. CNN falsely reported the president removed a bust of Dr. Martin Luther King from his office.  Three CNN employees resigned after the network retracted a story about a meeting between a Trump official and a Russian.

And on and on it goes.  The New York Times falsely claimed on its front page that the Trump Administration had hidden a climate report.  ABC demoted Brian Ross for a bungled report on Trump-Russia.  The Washington Post posted a phony photo of an empty stadium for a Trump rally.

In each case, social media users amplified the lies thousands and thousands of times on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.  One false story turns into a tsunami of fake news. That makes it even more incumbent on the legacy media to get its facts straight before the stories are reported as news.

There is no defense for the current spate of reckless reporting by the national media. The First Amendment is not a license for outright lying and deception.  The media has an obligation to hold government accountable, but it must be credible to do its job the way the founders intended.

Journalists are the ones who can fix the credibility problem.  Editors and media owners need to hold reporters accountable for truth and fairness or nothing will change.  The choice is theirs.  Either deal with the integrity issue or watch the news industry incinerate itself.