Trust in the media has deteriorated over the past several years. Evidently, most people recognize that establishment media outlets don’t trust them.
A recent Pew Research Center poll found that just 44% of U.S. journalists think that “journalists should always strive to give every side equal coverage.” Meanwhile, 55% think that “every side does not deserve equal coverage.” That journalists think their job is to determine which sides “deserve” coverage and not to inform the public isn’t a surprise, given how legacy media have frozen conservatives out on issues that are very much two-sided or more: abortion, gun control, “systemic racism,” religion, and gender ideology.
The public understands the role of journalism much better than journalists do. According to Pew, 76% say journalists should give every side equal coverage, while just 22% think they should choose who deserves coverage. That majority holds among every age group. People expect journalists to give them the whole story so they can make educated decisions for themselves — because people don’t like being treated like children.
76% of Americans overall say that journalists should always strive to give all sides of an issue equal coverage, whereas 44% of journalists say this. https://t.co/MLzudQpLpt pic.twitter.com/b292lySPcC
— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) July 13, 2022
Right now, journalism is increasingly about treating people like children. According to the Pew poll, 59% of journalists who think misinformation is a “very big problem” think they should determine who deserves coverage. Those journalists are typically younger (63% of those 18-29 and 60% who are 30-49), work in print (56%) and online media (61%), and, of course, they lean to the Left (69%).
You couldn’t better illustrate the sorry state of journalism, and the divide between journalists and normal people, than the results of this Pew poll. If anyone in the media wants to start regaining the trust that the industry has lost over the past few years, they should recognize that people simply want to be told what is happening, not that their superiors in media are protecting them from “misinformation.”
