Public's cynicism about media has become a pressing concern
At a time when public distrust of the news media appears to be at a dangerously high level, there is evidence of a deep and fundamental disagreement between those who produce news and those who consume it.
Although most journalists believe quality and values are vital elements of their work and see themselves as providing an important civic function, the reading and viewing public seems to think of journalism as a bottom-line-driven enterprise populated by the ethically challenged. Last month, the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism released a wide-ranging study -- "The State of the News Media 2004" -- that concluded that a key factor in journalism's sagging image is "a disconnection between the public and the news media over motive."
"Journalists believe they are working in the public interest, and are trying to be fair and independent in that cause," the survey found. "The public thinks these journalists are either lying or deluding themselves. The public believes that news organizations are operating largely to make money, and that the journalists who work for these organizations are primarily motivated by professional ambition and self-interest."
Diane McFarlin, publisher of the Sarasota Herald-
"There's lots of doubts about the motives of journalists," adds Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
Kohut regularly polls people about the media, and the responses aren't flattering. In a survey released last summer, 66 percent of the respondents said news organizations tended to be biased when covering political and social issues; only 26 percent thought they dealt fairly with all sides. Seventy percent said news outlets were often influenced by powerful people and organizations, while 23 percent considered the media independent of such influences. Less than half those surveyed thought news organizations were "moral," though only 32 percent were willing to label the media as "immoral." Still, when that question was asked in 1985, only 13 percent opted for the "immoral" characterization.
With the exception of a burst of national goodwill toward news outlets right after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the survey reveals a broad trend in which public opinion of the press has grown increasingly negative and cynical in the past two decades. Project for Excellence in Journalism director Tom Rosenstiel thinks the public is reacting in part to the news industry's efforts to streamline and operate more like a traditional business. "If [people] don't trust corporate journalism, they're going to get it from other sources," he warns. "We might just manage ourselves into oblivion."
Industry analysts cite a number of reasons for the anti-media sentiment, ranging from highly publicized ethical scandals to the "dumbing down" of news, particularly on television. Some say larger cultural factors, such as the nation's polarized political climate and a grass-roots distrust of many major institutions, have also contributed. Whatever the causes, it is clear that journalists have a much loftier view of their profession than their audience does.
In a 2003 poll for the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation, a majority of citizens -- 54 percent -- thought local television news was often improperly influenced by the desire to make a profit. Yet only 18 percent of news directors who took part in the survey agreed with that damning assessment.
Five years ago, the American Society of Newspaper Editors released a study of the industry's credibility problems and found that 59 percent of the public believed newspapers were more concerned with profits than with the public interest, 56 percent said papers made biased decisions about what to publish, and 50 percent said papers allowed advertisers to influence news.
"Given the high percentage of the public who believe that commercial interests . . . can influence news judgment, this belief emerges as a major factor to the decline in public perceptions of newspaper credibility," the report declared.
Yet 65 percent of the journalists surveyed for the credibility project said their papers didn't allow advertisers to influence news decisions, and 81 percent said their outlets didn't let editorial-page views affect news coverage. In 2002, the Indiana University School of Journalism asked media members about their profession and found a high level of job satisfaction. Almost three quarters felt high-quality journalism was "very important" to their owners, and only 38 percent thought their companies valued profits over good journalism.
"When you ask journalists about job satisfaction and why they get into this, a lot of them talk about public service and how good a job their news organization does in informing the public," says David Weaver, a professor of journalism at Indiana University who helped conduct the study. But Jay Rosen, chairman of the Journalism Department at New York University, says the media have failed to inform the public about their own evolving role.
The increasingly intrusive presence of the journalist in the story itself -- thanks in part to the proliferation of analysis and commentary in recent years -- has raised public concerns that have not been adequately addressed, Rosen says. "The journalist looms larger in the news. . . . It creates suspicions; it creates questions," he says. "The press became a player but never bothered to say what it was playing for."
And if there is a rough consensus among people concerned about the media's declining public image, it is that the journalism business must do a better job of communicating -- not just news and information but journalism's virtues and values as well.
"We need to work harder to explain what we do and why we do it," says Edward Seaton, publisher and editor in chief of The Manhattan Mercury in Kansas and a former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Adds Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association: "I think it's a case of the news media not doing the job it might do to make its decisions and process transparent to the public." 