Can You Trust The Press? | 5 Minute Video — Transcript

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1. 0:01Liberal or conservative, male or female, young or old, Americans love to bash the news media.
2. 0:09Once among the nation's most trusted institutions, the news media have fallen from grace.
3. 0:15According to Gallup, even as recently as 2000 a majority of Americans trusted the press;
4. 0:21by 2015 it had fallen to 40%; and lower than that, 36%, among those 18 to 49.
5. 0:31It's hard to see how this decline will be reversed.
6. 0:34The industry has become politically polarized and, in the highly competitive age of multiple
7. 0:4124-hour cable news channels and the Internet, it's under severe financial pressure.
8. 0:48And this compounds an even deeper problem – failing journalistic standards.
9. 0:54In the 1950s, the media universe consisted mainly of a few national television broadcast
10. 1:00networks, and local TV and radio stations, most of which got much of their “news”
11. 1:06from major wire services and the nation's large newspapers.
12. 1:10Most journalists were committed to producing “objective” journalism
13. 1:15– fact-based stories independent of the government and of political parties.
14. 1:20A reporter's job was to report, not offer opinion or advocate.
15. 1:25Presented with the facts, it was up to readers to make their own judgments about news events.
16. 1:31Opinions were supposed to be confined to editorial and op-ed pages.
17. 1:36That world no longer exists.
18. 1:39This lack of objectivity and decline of standards is one reason, though not the only one,
19. 1:46why newspapers and news magazines are a declining industry.
20. 1:50According to Pew Research, print revenue from newspaper sales has declined from $47 billion
21. 1:57in 2006 to $16 billion in 2014.
22. 2:01Digital sales haven't come close to making up the difference.
23. 2:05Most papers have been forced to cut operating expenses: slash staff and close bureaus
24. 2:12– overseas, in particular.
25. 2:14Ironically, there are more stories than ever to cover and fewer staff than ever to cover them.
26. 2:20This lack of information from professional journalists has been filled by a new source
27. 2:26– social media and the blogosphere.
28. 2:29When the Iraq war, which I covered for the New York Times, began in 2003,
29. 2:35there were roughly one hundred thousand bloggers.
30. 2:38Only a few years later, there were an estimated twenty-seven million.
31. 2:44The Internet as a news source has obvious pluses and minuses.
32. 2:49On the plus side is that information is spread widely and instantly.
33. 2:53The minuses have to do with the fact that the quality of reporting varies dramatically.
34. 2:58It's not easy to separate the wheat from the chaff.
35. 3:02Furthermore, many sites, including mainstream sites, have abandoned traditional journalistic
36. 3:07practices and standards in search of more and more “eyeballs.”
37. 3:12Objectivity, once the gold standard of reporting, is now often seen as old-fashioned, a ratings loser.
38. 3:20When success is measured mainly in terms of “clicks,” the outrageous beats the sober
39. 3:25just about every time.
40. 3:27Inserting opinion, even in the middle of a news story, is a way in which journalists
41. 3:32can distinguish themselves.
42. 3:34And in mainstream media outlets, those opinions overwhelmingly tend to be liberal.
43. 3:40This might not be so bad if journalists acknowledged their bias.
44. 3:44But they almost never do.
45. 3:46Yet the bias is obvious.
46. 3:49According to a 2014 study by two Indiana University professors, reporters who identify as Democrats
47. 3:57outnumber those who identify as Republican by 4 to 1, 28% to 7%.
48. 4:06The remaining 65% call themselves independent.
49. 4:09But based on my long experience as a reporter, this is a fiction; that is, many reporters
50. 4:16like to describe themselves as independent, but they're not – not really.
51. 4:22By any fair measure this group is overwhelming on the political Left.
52. 4:27The obvious liberal bias has only served to push conservative readers to those sources
53. 4:32that cater to conservative themes – further polarizing the media landscape.
54. 4:38And, unable to attract conservatives, the mainstream media have chosen to double down
55. 4:43on views and themes that appeal to their liberal constituency.
56. 4:47To give just one example, when Fox News broke a story in January 2016 about the discovery
57. 4:54of top secret intelligence on the private email server that Hillary Clinton used while
58. 5:00secretary of state – classified information which she had denied ever having sent or received –
59. 5:07the New York Times buried this news story deep inside the paper.
60. 5:12A decline in reporting standards, a decline in revenue and increase in bias have made
61. 5:18many wary of the people who provide them with their news.
62. 5:22A certain amount of skepticism is a healthy thing, but a thriving democracy
63. 5:27depends on a dynamic and free press.
64. 5:31As much as people may like to bash the media, most people would far prefer to trust it.
65. 5:38I'm Judith Miller, contributing editor of City Journal for Prager University.