There is a type of journalist who is so drunk on his own self-importance and the myth of the infallibility of the free press he is unable to recognize the news industry’s struggles with credibility are largely self-inflicted.
The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser is such a journalist.
Trust in the news media declined between 2016 and 2021 across all partisan categories, according to recent data from the Pew Research Center.
Democrats and Republicans have lost faith in “national news organizations,” while the “all adults” category has seen a similar drop in trust.
Over the past five years, the percentage of individuals who identify as Democrat or lean Democrat with a “lot” or “some” trust in “national news organizations” has slipped from 83% to 78%. Meanwhile, the percentage of respondents who identify as Republican or lean Republican with a “lot” or “some” trust in the national press has dropped from 70% to 35%.
For the “all adults” category, those who trust the national media declined from 76% to 58% between 2016 and 2021.
Trust has declined across the board, across the ideological spectrum. However, the number of self-identified Republicans who say they’ve lost faith in “national news organizations” is far greater than the number of self-identified Democrats who claim the same.
For Glasser, Pew’s data is not indicative of a larger problem in the press — that both the Left, the Right, and the middle are losing faith in an institution supposedly holding the powerful accountable.
No, it’s not our fault. It’s all Trump’s fault!
“Republicans with some trust in national media:
70% in 2016
35% in 2021
The Trump years, in short,” she said this week on social media.
Glasser adds, “Turns out having a president who labels the press ‘enemies of the people’ makes a difference.”
The really instructive thing about this is: Glasser is no backbencher. She was once the editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy. She was an editor at Politico. Glasser was also a founding editor of Politico Magazine. She also spent a decade at the Washington Post, serving as the Moscow co-bureau chief. She isn’t just a random left-wing blogger with a terribly stilted understanding of the issues that dog the news business. She is a member of that ultra-exclusive group of media elite who move and direct news coverage and commentary.
More disturbing than the fact a member of the industry’s upper crust has such a skewed understanding of the press’s credibility problem is the fact Glasser is representative of how these people think. “Nothing is the fault of the press, not even its own admitted mistakes and poor behavior.”
No, the problem is always someone else’s — most likely a Republican’s or a conservative’s fault.
However, the problem is that trust in the press was at record lows long before Donald Trump even announced his candidacy.
In 2004, Americans’ trust in mass media registered at about 44%, according to Gallup. By 2008, the number had fallen to 43%. By 2015, the year Trump launched his presidency, it had fallen to 40%. By 2016, it had fallen to 32%.
This trend is caused by years of bad reporting, high-profile media scandals, and incendiary, clownish punditry. This is not the result of a single man or mean tweets. It’s the result of an entire industry acting poorly.
Distrust in the press is nothing new. It predates the Trump era by a long way. In fact, Trump’s decision to take on the press was not some stroke of genius on his behalf. The man simply read the room.
As to the matter of trust in the press declining across all groups during and post-Trump’s presidency, perhaps people such as Glasser should take a look in the mirror. It’s easy to blame Trump’s rhetoric. But it’s probably more accurate to blame the press’s own malfeasance, misconduct, and slip-shod reporting.
Trump didn’t force the press to spend nearly two years on a Russian collusion goose chase. Trump didn’t force reporters to crucify a Kentucky teenager because he was recorded at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. Trump didn’t force the press to amplify every absurd and obviously bogus allegation of sexual misconduct leveled against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Trump didn’t force the press to falsely accuse firefighters, West Point cadets, and many others of being closeted white supremacists after they were caught playing the “circle game.”
As it turns out, if you spend all your energy “reporting” every insane allegation and anti-conservative conspiracy theory as fact, every small event as an unprecedented assault on our “core democracy,” people stop taking you seriously.
If, like Susan Glasser, you spend four straight years promoting baseless Russian collusion theories, only to turn around later and publish glowing, pro-Democratic hagiographies with titles such as “Biden will restore America’s moral leadership,” people will no longer trust that you’re playing straight with them.
Trump may have played a small part in the overall decline in trust. But the lion’s share of blame falls to the press. That the news business is filled with people such as Glasser, who believe a single man is responsible for the media’s credibility woes, poses a far greater danger to the industry’s long-term health than anything the former president ever said.
