Trust in <fill in the blank> has probably dropped to historic levels. Politicians, garbage collectors, internet connections, clean water – pick your issue; our trust in “it” has most likely gone down.
In 1972, Gallup polling first asked the question about Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.”
At its height, 72% of Americans had confidence and trust in the media in 1976 after investigative journalism broke open the doors on the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War.
Here we are now in 2017 where, according to Gallup, we’ve reached record lows in our trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.
And guess what? The results follow political party affiliations.
In the most recent poll results, 51% of Democrats trust the media, whereas only 14% of Republicans have trust in the news media. Fourteen percent. Where did Republicans rank their trust in the media last year? It was at 32%, according to the Gallup poll.
Recently, I did a three-day experiment to follow the same story reported from traditional media outlets, which have been thoroughly studied over the years, to be considered center or just right or just left of center-focused with their editorial direction.
Those media outlets were: The New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and NPR.
What I did was take a Trump-related story (because there are so many of them) reported by all of these media outlets and found the far-left and far-right media “reporting” versions of these stories. And this is pretty much how it went:
The original story headline used by the center media channels was consistently, as an example, “Jeff Sessions Recuses Himself From Russia Investigations.”
Then I just had to wait about five minutes for the extreme fringe media outlets to take that original reported story and put their editorial slant on it. In the Jeff Sessions example, a few headlines were as follows:
- “Crisis-hit Jeff Sessions Recuses Himself Over Russia Lies”
- “Jeff Sessions Recuses Himself From Inquiry Into Trump Ties to Russia”
- “This Is a Big, Honking Deal”
- “Jeff Sessions Should Absolutely Not Resign Over These Bogus Russia Allegations”
I’m not going to point out what headlines came from what politically-aligned media source. You can figure that out for yourself.
This example might not seem shocking to you anymore, especially for those of you who believe that Elvis is still alive and there was no moon landing.
I call this era of extreme polarized news coverage as “Juxt-Opposition.” Meaning, no matter what the actual news is, there’s an opposite story created to fit the extreme left or right of your political and social views. That way, you always feel justified in your paranoid, racist, homophobic, socialist, conservative, white, black, environmentalist, globalist or nationalist view of the world you want.
It’s all out there on your social media feeds. You might not realize it, but you’ve been influenced by algorithms created by Facebook and Google to match your personal preferences, and supported by “news outlets” like The Raw Story or Natural News on the left and The Daily Caller or Breitbart on the right.
Now, this distrust in media has only grown because, for one thing, facts are now in question.
It’s a fact, from decades of research and study, that The New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and NPR actually fall within the center sphere of journalistic integrity and standards. We’re talking straight news here and not opinion pieces or editorials. But even those facts are disputed by the fringe elements, where these people believe those news outlets are “secretly run by Jews and our government.” As Trump would say, sad! Because that kind of crap is stuff I’d expect from my great-grandparents to say while drunk at Thanksgiving.
Facebook and Google have admitted to those algorithmic influences and both organizations are currently working to bring the online world back into the middle. But is that even possible at this point?
Juxt-Opposition appears to fit who we are as a nation of news consumers on our smartphones. There’s a much deeper issue here regarding the need to appease advertisers and get clicks on the news sites. Believe me, I completely understand that pressure because the way we now gobble up news is the way I eat chips and salsa – I want it in a hurry and really spicy, and it holds me over for a few hours until I need to eat again.
I recently heard more about this mistrust in the media during one-on-one meetings I had with people and vendors and even some of our advertisers while at GAC. Yes, even a mistrust in CU Times’coverage of our small industry. To one person, I literally said, “Here’s how our process works – we take the facts, we write a story and we publish it. There’s no conspiracy behind what we do.”
Do we get things wrong sometimes? Yes, of course. And when we do, we own up to it and make the corrections because we are normal humans and trust is all we have right now. And trust is a commodity that’s dwindling in our nation and in the news.
I challenge you to take a look at where you get your news and see if you’re being Juxt-Opposed.
Michael Ogden is executive editor for CU Times. He can be reached at mogden@cutimes.com.
