Because of Snarky Journalists Americans don’t trust the news media

In these days of the coronavirus, we are being told many things through the news media. One overwhelming message being communicated is that we should “social distance” and stay home. But it seems that Americans don’t want to do that anymore.

Perhaps one reason for this is the fact that Americans simply don’t trust the news media coverage. Polling evidence suggest an ever-declining opinion of the news media in the United States. One could argue that President Donald Trump’s negative comments about the media have contributed to this.

[WASH POST FAKE NEWS TRUMP VIDEO]

We could certainly blame Trump for the current lack of trust in the media. Afterall, President Trump has thrived on this American mistrust – making it an us-against-them scenario. Vivienne Flesher writes that Trump;

Engender[s]such distrust in the media that around 40 percent of Americans seem to accept almost everything he says, even in the face of incontrovertible reporting to the contrary, as a kind of thumb in the eye of the so-called coastal elites.

But there are other factors to blame for this American distrust, specifically the behavior of the media themselves. University of Oklahoma Professor Charles Self found four reasons for Americans not trusting the news media, listed in the book Media Law and Ethics by Roy Moore and Michael Murray. Let’s focus on the first one…”Insensitivity, arrogance, and generally bad behavior.”

In her article, Flesher also indicates that arrogance may be a problem with reporting, citing columnist Margaret Sullivan. Flesher writes “Sullivan suggests that journalism could regain some trust by focusing on topics that affect ordinary people’s lives and by “stamping out” a snarky attitude that implicitly brags, “I’m smarter than my audience.”

In fact, Bernard Goldberg wrote an article titled; “If Arrogance Were a Crime, a Lot of Journalists Would Be in Jail.” Goldberg’s article is mainly concerned with the way that Trump is portrayed by the news media – pointing out the negativity of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and CNN’s Don Lemon. While Goldberg admits that Trump perhaps asks for this treatment with all of his misleading and perhaps even untruthful renditions of “alternative facts”; Goldberg seems to feel that the media is not fulfilling its obligation to be objective in its reporting. According to Goldberg, the media “detest[s] Trump.” And they show it with …in his words… a “nonstop snarky onslaught .”

I must admit that I don’t watch the daily White House briefings because they seem to always end up being some sort of war of words between Trump and the press. They appear to be almost pointless and absurd. Recently, the Knight Foundation conducted a survey on Trust, Media and Democracy. Among the findings were;

· That Americans do not feel that the media are fulfilling their important role in democracy

and

· Americans perceive the media in a negative way and believe the media is overtly bias

This lack of trust is very political as well, that is a greater percentage of Democrats (69 %) trust the news media when compared to Republicans (15 %). This is a very big problem, especially during these times of a global pandemic where the government is trying to put out information that could mean life or death. Perhaps we could blame the President for this, but we could equally consider the way in which the press behaves – after all, you have to admit, sometimes they are just plain snarky.