They say that two negatives don’t make a positive, but when it
comes to current perceptions of the media, the opposite may be
true.
They say that two negatives don’t make a positive, but when it comes to current perceptions of the media, the opposite may be true.
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has been measuring public attitudes about the media for a long time. You can go blind trying to make sense of all the numbers generated by Pew, so at the risk of oversimplification, let me grab just two that might bring the above thesis into focus.
In its Trends 2005 report, Pew reported that 45 percent of the public believe little or nothing of what they read in the paper. (You’ll have to believe that stat if we have any hope of getting to the end of this column together, but perhaps that’s not in doubt.) It’s just one example of a mountain of evidence of public distrust of the media.
Here’s negative No. 2. The august Annenberg Public Policy Center recently polled the public, asking: Who do you consider a journalist? The question was followed by a list of the usual suspects. The most shocking number from respondents: 40 percent said Bill O’Reilly deserved the title.
If you’re a Fox News fan, God bless you. But O’Reilly’s relentless bashing of liberal opinion – his lame protestations of nonpartisanship notwithstanding – is no more journalism than this column is AP-style reporting. Both are opinion-mongering – in my opinion.
Those are the two negatives. Here’s the positive.
If Americans have lost trust in the press, and the public defines journalists as people like Bill O’Reilly, then we may have found the root of the problem.
Here are a couple more numbers, just to drive the point home: only 30 percent of the respondents to the Annenberg poll said they thought of Bob Woodward as a journalist. That’s Bob Woodward of Woodward and Bernstein, and Watergate, fame. Meanwhile, 27 percent of Americans, only three points below Woodward, thought of Rush Limbaugh as a journalist.
The problem is not so much that journalists have been doing such a bad job – although we’ve had our share of screw-ups in recent years, such as the Jayson Blair fiasco at the New York Times – but that the public has lost track of just what journalists are and therefore what we should expect from them.
It’s no wonder confidence has dropped. People like O’Reilly have dragged it down.
With all the vilification of journalism, the recent unmasking of Deep Throat could not have come at a better moment. Old press hands engaged in a charming display of nostalgia for the days when they were praised as heroes, rather than condemned as the Satan’s spawn. It’s just unfortunate the public, bamboozled into thinking of people like Limbaugh as a journalist, was disinclined to share in that nostalgia.
Blame that on the definition of the press having been wrenched into a Gordion Knot by the twisted partisanship of talk-show blowhards like Sean Hannity. But struggling only makes Gordion Knots tighter. You have to relax if you have any hope of freeing yourself from the situation.
In terms of the press, that suggests returning to the basics. Do the simple things well, and the rest will take care of itself. That’s what small-town papers like this one do best.
The contrast with Washington, New York and other big markets, where people have to shout to be heard, is clear. One explanation of the deep distrust revealed by the Pew report is that this multiplicity of voices has created a crisis of credibility. The World Wide Web has busted former monopolies as bloggers have crashed the gates of the media Bastille.
The news outlets that are doing the best are the ones whose niches are intact. That well describes what small-town papers like this one do.
My advice to the big boys is not to suddenly start running high school graduation photos on A1. It’s this: Treat your readers, or viewers, like they are all members of your small town – writ large. Pay closer attention to the small consequences of your reporting. Treat your “consumers” like neighbors.
Doing so doesn’t mean you pull your punches. It’s more a question of attitude and tone. My sense is that the public feels the media have simply gotten too big for their britches. And in that, the public may be right.
John Yewell is the city editor of The Hollister Free Lance
