CNN is in denial.
CNN is in denial.
C NN’s unintentional acts of public service deserve recognition.
Network anchor Abby Phillip, for example, alleged in total earnestness last week that the erosion of media credibility is driven largely by right-wing rhetoric, as opposed to anything members of the press have said or done.
This is abject nonsense, as decades of data show. Her assertion amounts to little more than accountability dodging. But in a particularly ironic twist, Phillip’s too-convenient explanation exemplifies why the public has less faith in the news industry than even Wall Street or Big Pharma. It turns out people tend not to trust those unwilling to admit fault, and they trust even less those incapable of introspection.
“Mass media are dying,” CNN guest and self-appointed media authority Jeff Jarvis opined last week. “The problem is that the right wing . . . [has] taken advantage of this situation, I think, quite cleverly, quite wisely. They’ve played into a weakness.”
GOP pundit Scott Jennings interjected, “What situation?”
“The situation of media being under attack,” Jarvis responded.
“What the right wing is taking advantage of is the American people saying enough is enough,” Jennings shot back. “They’re tired of feeling like the mass media screens out one viewpoint versus another in political coverage. They’re tired of media institutions favoring one party over another.”
The Republican CNN contributor referred to Gallup survey data, which show trust in media has cratered over the past 40 years, primarily among Republicans and independents.
A bit later, Phillip jumped in to tell him that “a lot of this is driven by the rhetoric on your side of the aisle.” Somewhat taken aback, Jennings asked, “You think [the drop in media trust] is driven by the rhetoric and not the performance?”
“Absolutely,” Phillip said.
Rubbish.
The credibility crisis has more to do with the press’s sloppiness and outright dishonesty, its near-religious refusal to explain mistakes even after acknowledging them, its habitual ignorance regarding specific topics (faith and firearms come to mind), its partisan editorial decisions, its refusal to correct course, its closed-mindedness, its lack of diversity of opinion, and its groupthink than anything said by someone on the right. This crisis, which is self-inflicted and organic, has been decades in the making.
Let’s review the data.
Only 8 percent of Americans report having “a great deal” of trust and confidence in the mass media “when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly,” according to Gallup.
In contrast, 36 percent of survey respondents say they had no confidence “at all.”
Specifically, distrust among Republicans has grown exponentially under President Trump, with the percentage of those who say they have no trust “at all” jumping from 27 percent in 2015 to 59 percent in 2024.
More importantly, however, is the percentage of independents who say they have no confidence in our press. This number has also surged during the Trump era, increasing from 27 percent in 2015 to 42 percent in 2024.
Self-declared Democrats have held steady in this category from 2000 onward, showing they largely trust our press. Yet, this is hardly good news for Democrats or a supporting data point for Phillip. Here, Democrats are the outliers. Moreover, the Gallup data show younger Democrats distrust the press more than their older counterparts do. Only 31 percent of those identifying as Democrat/Democrat lean in the 18-29 demographic have a “great deal/fair amount” of faith in media, compared with much larger percentages in the 50-64 cohort (63 percent) and the 65+ crowd (75 percent).
Congress is the only institution that polls worse than the press. Even the presidency is more popular than television news and newspapers. Trust in specific journalism professions has likewise seen a sharp decline. Trust in “television reporters” and “newspaper reporters” has fallen by 23 points and 14 points, respectively, since 1981.
In other words, trust in media has declined across every conceivable category since Gallup began tracking this issue more than 50 years ago.
Do you suppose this is due to any fault of the press? Or is it, as Phillip suggests, that right-wing rhetoric is somehow responsible for the destruction of the press’s reputation even among those who aren’t Republicans? The data, and common sense, suggest it’s the former: that the press’s credibility crisis is of its own making, caused by everything from its botched coverage of the lead-up to the disastrous war in Iraq, to its abysmal handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, to its absurd insistence that former President Joe Biden was in tip-top shape when he was anything but.
Moreover, we have historical Gallup data showing the implosion began long before the rise of the modern right-wing media ecosphere. The decline even predates Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. It dates back to the Nixon administration, when the now-struggling mainstream media — the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News — had a stranglehold on news dissemination.
The percentage of respondents who say they have a “great deal/fair amount” of confidence in mass media has dropped by 37 points since 1972. Back then, the percentage of respondents who said they had confidence in mass media hovered around 70 percent, while those who said they had no confidence sat at just 6 percent. By 1996, the number of those with high confidence had fallen to 53 percent.
Today, the figures look even worse. Last year, the percentage of those who said they had no confidence in the press clocked in at 36 percent, while the number of those who said they had a “great deal/fair amount” of confidence registered at a slightly smaller 31 percent.
Tracking partisan decline, trust in the media in 1972 hovered around 70 percent among Republican and Democratic respondents. Now, however, roughly 54 percent of Democratic respondents say they have a “great deal/fair amount” of confidence in mass media, whereas only 12 percent of Republicans say the same. Most importantly, Gallup found that the percentage of independents who have faith in the press has cratered over the past five decades, falling from 59 percent in 1972 to just 27 percent last year.
The decline in media credibility has been both constant and sharp, with only a few bright spots for the press. It’s a tidy excuse, but you can’t blame, say, Ben Shapiro for the 32-point decline in trust among independents since the year Nixon went to China. You can’t blame Fox News. You can’t blame Limbaugh. You can’t even blame Trump. He didn’t invent distrust in media; it existed long before his presidential ambitions. He merely seized on a trope commonly accepted by everyone but (apparently) Democratic audiences: that the news media can’t be trusted to cover the news fairly and accurately (especially political news).
To rebuild trust with our audiences, we must first acknowledge that we are part of the problem. We must first admit our failures to bridge the credibility gap.
Admitting you have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery.