Regaining Our Trust

Jonathan Watson
Nov 6 · 6 min read

Come on, media…

Ethos is “a method of persuasion in which the speaker or writer…attempts to persuade the audience by demonstrating his own credibility or authority” Logically, then, part of ethos is the ability of a speaker or writer to demonstrate or convince the listener / reader of that authority.

Now, the vast majority of people believe that the job of the journalist — not the opinion editor mind you, or the color commentator, or the interviewee — is to present the truth of some event. This is not a new feeling or idea. For instance, Noam Chomsky said, in an interview in 2004:

The duty of journalists is to tell the truth. Journalism means you go back to the actual facts, you look at the documents, you discover what the record is, and you report it that way.

The reasoning behind this idea, the purpose of the press as the antidote to abuse of power, goes even further back, to those like Justice Hugo Black, who stated that:

Thus the press serves and was designed to serve as a powerful antidote to any abuses of power by governmental officials and as a constitutionally chosen means for keeping officials elected by the people responsible to all the people whom they were selected to serve.

These are high-minded ideals. Whether the press lives up to them has been a constant question. Thomas Jefferson, for all the importance he placed on freedom of the press, stated in a letter regarding the newspapers of his day:

It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.

In his typical style, Ambrose Bierce in his Devil’s Dictionary, said that a reporter was “A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.” G.K. Chesterton, slightly less bitingly, said “Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.”

Right now, the press generally has an approximate negative impression among Americans, with only 41% having a “a great deal or fair amount of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.” And, with those of knowledge of Republicans, the numbers are worse, as reported by Gallup:

Republicans’ trust is still at a very low level and a wide gap in views of the media among partisans persists as 69% of Democrats say they have trust and confidence in it, while 15% of Republicans and 36% of independents agree.

There is a great deal of hand-wringing in the press about the perception of the press as untrustworthy. Some of it points the finger at Donald Trump for saying that “The fake news media… is the enemy of the American People” in 2017. This story posits multiple causes and offers a number of cures.

With that said, I think the media should consider its own ethos — its own authority, as part of the problem. The media, in sum of what I have said here, needs to consider how and why it has lost the trust of a clear majority of the American people, and depending on political preferences, even more than a clear majority.

To trust someone or something is to believe “to rely on the truthfulness or accuracy of [or] to place confidence in” that other. People tend to trust those whom they think are looking out for their interests. Let’s assume that people believe that the news ought to attempt to report facts, especially about the government or society, that people might not be able to find out themselves. Certainly, this is the vision that Chomsky, Black, and Jefferson idealized.

If people begin to think or believe that the media is looking out for interests other than the fair and unbiased reporting of facts, they will no longer trust in the media. The media’s ethos will suffer. And, I suspect, this is what has happened to the media. A few recent examples will suffice.

First, what happens when the media seems to display that it can’t be bothered to learn about things that don’t concern a particular elite class in the United States? Case in point: recently, a pregnant woman defended her family using an AR-15. The AR-15, usually chambered in .223 or 5.56, is manufactured by Colt, among other makers. However, a (less than) 10 second search on Google lead me to the Wikipedia page for the weapon, which indicated that the “AR” designation stands for “Armalite” — the company which originally designed and manufactured the weapon. As recently as yesterday, when reporting on the pregnant woman story, a CNN tweet stated that she defended her family using an “automatic rifle.” This is the tweet in question:

Now, the weapon in question was likely a semi-automatic (since there are very, very few automatic weapons in civilian hands, and even fewer likely used for home defense) AR-15. However, the media consistently makes the mistake of calling it an “automatic rifle.” They have been corrected repeatedly, and have nonetheless continually failed to do basic research. Any individual with knowledge of weapons and the AR-15, or even someone willing to spend 15 mins to learn a bit, would know these facts. This indicates to the average gun owner, as well as any teacher or professor willing to consider the matter, that the media can’t be bothered to get things right if they perceive it doesn’t matter. And to those, therefore, that getting this right does matter, how can the media be trusted to get more complex things (say, reporting on a potential presidential quid pro quo) correct?

A second example, recently come to light, is the apparent coverup of stories relating to Jeffrey Epstein for some three years at least one, and maybe more, major media outlets. Again, look at the ideals espoused by Jefferson, et. al. If it becomes apparent that the media covers up or mangles reporting to benefit its favored parties or to benefit itself, then the media loses credibility. The media was very quick to trumpet Epstein’s Trump connections when he was arrested. However, it was apparently willing to sit silently on damning information while Epstein committed more crimes, information that might have stopped some of them from happening. It has also had very little to say regarding the apparent cover-up.

If the average person feels that the news media not only cannot get basic things correct because of a lack of care or caring, but discovers that the media is actively engaged in killing major stories or delaying them in order to get favored treatment for itself or friends, the media’s ethos is greatly diminished. If the average person believes that special people get special treatment from the media, while the less-favored people continue to be trampled underfoot, then the media’s image is tarnished, perhaps irrevocably.

IF the media wishes to regain the trust of people, it must look hard at itself, and consider:

(1) How to get the small details right, not just in matters that seem important to a particular audience, but to all of its audiences.

(2) How to ensure that it is reporting facts, and factually, about all people who come within its orbit — not simply reserving negative reporting for certain politicians or political classes, and passing on the rest with poor excuse.

If it cannot, then the media, all media, should simply step aside from the claim of unbiased, factual, reporting, and simply claim the mantle of bias and partisanship. At least in that case, they would be honest about their preferences, and would ironically be trusted more by the population at large.

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