Declining trust fuels media devolution

Thank you for taking the time to read this morning, and this weekend we join you in honoring the mothers that have been impactful in each of our lives. 

Today, however, we’re talking media. Trust in news reporting is in utter freefall. Why? And what does it mean?

A common answer is that the purpose of reporting has changed from informing to persuasion. That’s undoubtedly true. But there’s more to the story – it’s not just a matter of shifting industry ethics. It’s also a matter of shifting industry economics.

For most of the 20^th century, journalism’s commercial purpose and ethical purpose coexisted in a happy marriage. But over the past 15 years, they’ve divorced. And the dependents of that marriage – the general public – suffered the consequences.

The result? More than half of Americans believe news media intentionally misleads them. Just 34% trust the media to report the news “fully, accurately, and fairly.”

We’ve moved closer to the 19^th century model of journalism: Each side, separated by political party, has its own source of news and distrusts information from other sources. Our very reality, then, is no longer tethered to an agreed-upon set of facts.

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Since the 19^th century, the Fourth Estate has ping-ponged between hyper-partisan “yellow journalism” and balls-and-strikes “objective journalism.”

Media’s business model, not high-minded concepts like the good of the body politic, fueled the shifts – and fuel them still.

Before the Civil War, nearly all media outlets were extensions of a political party. Papers “gave one-sided versions of the news,” University of Wisconsin Professor James Baughman wrote. “There was no objective middle ground.”

Why? Because political parties funded the papers, either directly or through government printing contracts, Baughman explained.

Around the turn of the century, the financial incentives changed. Commercial advertising offered a far more lucrative revenue stream than funding from political parties or government contracts.

Advertising rates are proportionate to the number of people who see the ads, so broad reach became a newspaper’s chief incentive.

To reach a broader audience, papers toned down the political rhetoric, rebranding themselves as objective and unbiased to earn maximum audience share and maximum ad dollars.

As City Journal explains in a deep piece on the subject:

“Ad money carried the risks of advertisers’ pressure in news production, which would have undermined newsroom autonomy, a source of reputation and therefore capitalization. So professional standards were elaborated to protect journalism from advertisers and establish the credibility of news coverage. Credibility was seen as a professional virtue but also as a commodity. ‘The theory underlying the modern news industry has been the belief that credibility builds a broad and loyal audience, and that economic success follows in turn,’ declared the American Press Association in its 1997 ‘Principles of Journalism’ statement.”

Journalism’s commercial and ethical interests, then, entered into a marriage that made media companies fabulously rich and influential. People trusted them, and executives valued that trust because it made them money.

But in the past 15 years, media’s commercial incentives have once again shifted. Ad revenue began declining as how people viewed content diversified. Social media companies, not legacy media outlets, became the best way to reach consumers.

So news outlets had a choice, though not all of them knew it: Change their business model or die. Smart outlets like the New York Times chased paying subscribers. Dead outlets like Vice and Buzzfeed kept chasing ad revenue through click volume.

Joe Nocera, a former New York Times reporter, explained the dynamic in a piece this week for The Free Press: “[In 2014, then-CEO of the New York Times Mark Thompson] said the Times was going to focus on getting readers to pay for its journalism in a way it never had before. That was the future. That pivot has been enormously successful. In 2022, the New York Times Company had $2.3 billion in revenue. Of that, 67 percent came from subscriptions.”

But subscribers have different demands than advertisers. If they don’t like the content offered to them, on an emotional and political level, they will leave.

Objectivity and broad trust are no longer paramount. Catering to the subscriber base, and those of a like mind who might subscribe, is now the chief incentive for news outlets like the New York Times.

Coverage in those outlets over the past decade reflects this changed dynamic. Fairness and objectivity don’t anchor news coverage any longer. Yes, as a question of professional standards most reporters still say they are fair and impartial. But they’re fair and impartial as viewed from the perspective of their subscriber audience. The very definition of “fair” has changed.

News outlets of course didn’t make this paradigm shift explicit, so the public is still judging the news it consumes by 20^th century standards.

Right-leaning or even centrist readers of the New York Times, for example, see coverage changes and conclude the paper has lost its way. That’s why they report waning trust to pollsters. (We’re picking on the New York Times but the same principle applies to outlets that offer right-leaning coverage).

But the New York Times doesn’t care as much about waning trust writ large – they care only about trust among subscribers and subscriber targets.

Recent polling makes this reality glaringly obvious. Massive partisan trust gaps exist across the media spectrum. At ABC, the trust spread between Democrats and Republicans is 78 points. At the Associated Press, its 60 points. At the New York Times, its 83 points. CNN is 92 points. Fox News is 56 points.

These are massive gulfs. It means Americans no longer operate under a common set of agreed-upon facts. They now digest reality through colored prisms.

It also means elected leaders can largely ignore inconvenient reporting by outlets that don’t cater to their partisan base. The New York Post, for example, has written extensively on suspect foreign business dealings involving President Joe Biden’s immediate family and potentially the president personally.

So long as the story stays out of the New York Times and MSNBC, Biden doesn’t have a major scandal on his hands. He and his staff can pass off the reporting as untrustworthy and partisan. Former President Donald Trump did (and still does) the same thing.

And the New York Times and MSNBC don’t have much incentive to cover the story because their subscriber base doesn’t really want to hear about it.

One can see the problems posed by a reversion to 19^th century journalism standards.

Politics in the 19^th century was even more brutal and personal than politics today. So long as commercial media incentives continue their shift, brace yourself for more.

We’ll be here to help cut through the noise, as always.