Amongst our team, we often forward emails of common interest and let the banter fly. You might imagine what followed the exchange yesterday of some statistics from a new study showing just how low journalists have fallen on the consumer’s trust meter. Let’s just say we might as well be lawyers; at least we’d be better compensated for the general distaste.

Overall trust in the news, according to a new report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, is the lowest in the United States of any country, at 26%. Interest in news across all markets has dropped to 51% this year, from 63% in 2017. And just 17% of people pay for online news, with the average age of a digital news subscriber 50.

Some of the intra-squad banter, then:

“I credit this disaster, at least in part, to j-schools churning out ideologues who believe, like Zorro, that their ‘sword is flame to right every wrong.’

“That’s what peddling Russiagate for a few years (among other colossal blunders) will get ya!”

“I believe the problem is centered around so called ‘journalists’ that allow their opinion to bias their reporting. People consider Fox, MSNBC, CNN and other ‘news’ outlets to be news, when they show little objectivity. It occurs with newspapers too.”

I didn’t chime in on that actual email exchange, but I will now; heck, the blog deadline is fast approaching!

Ah, there it is — the need for speed. For me, that’s the core problem in the dilution of good journalism and its credibility.

The internet is an amazing resource, one that has supplied journalists with a bottomless trove of information to use beyond the traditional phone calling and door knocking. But it’s also a 24-hour cycle where publishing first, to satisfy consumers with smart phones cradled in their hands and scrolling through social media feeds, has become the priority over publishing factual and constructive information.

As anyone familiar with a production line of any kind knows, going too fast increases the likelihood for mistakes. It’s even worse when there are fewer bodies on that line. I know this from personal experience in my line of work in the digital world, a vastly different one from the days when there were desks devoted only to copy editing and fact-checking. My own mistakes, while trying to churn out two newsletters every day, have included everything from an innocent typo to a more damaging factual error. No matter the nature of the error, they all erode credibility and trust.

The pace of information, in my mind, also has eroded the consumers’ standards for it. Quantity from any “content creator” trumps quality from trained and right-intentioned journalists. The result is a dizzying blur, one in which news consumers aren’t as interested in facts as they are in whatever information aligns with their opinion or cause. It’s a perfect arena for today’s toxic and destructive political discourse.

And sellers will sell what consumers want to be sold.

We’re in the middle of an intense period of history in which various amendments of the Constitution are in flux. The First Amendment, that which provides for a free press, is not getting the headlines that the others are. But consider that if the quality of and trust in the press continues to erode, it’s a right that becomes harder to defend.

The saying goes that “with freedom comes responsibility.” Let’s hope for a speedy rebound in responsible journalism, so that the free practice of it can fulfill its democratic function.

The need for — and the problem with — speed

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