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Mainstream Media NewsMedia News
The Media Has Lost the Publics Trust
By Gary Palmer
Posted on: June 18, 2005
June has been a bad news month for the news media. A recent report indicates that the general public's trust in newspapers and television news are at all-time lows. In addition, another report shows that newspaper subscriptions are facing an accelerated decline. These reports, combined with the major networks news programs and CNN's continued slide in ratings, means the public is fed up with news coverage that is not fair and balanced.
Trust of the media has now reached an all-time low according to the Gallup annual survey of the public's confidence in major news gathering institutions. Gallup, which has been doing this survey since 1972, found that the public's confidence in newspapers and television has declined from 54 percent in 1989 to only 28 percent this month.
The mainstream media has no one to blame but themselves. In the last year alone the public has seen how biased the mainstream media has become. The most prominent example involved Dan Rather and CBS News pushing a bogus report about President Bush's service in the Air National Guard. CBS News apologized for the erroneous report and launched an investigation to find a scapegoat to fire.
More recently, Newsweek's bogus report that American interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay prisoner camp flushed a Koran down a toilet not only further alienated the American public, but also resulted in an outbreak of rioting in the Arab countries that left at least 17 people dead. Rather than apologize, Newsweek issued a statement saying they "…regret that we got any part of our story wrong."
What they really regret is having their liberal bias exposed. More evidence of this can be found in what some of the major media do not report or how they do report on issues that hurt their side.
Take for instance, some rather extreme statements made recently by Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party. Chairman Dean has said publicly that, Republicans are evil and he hates them, which apparently gives him a list of enemies longer than Richard Nixon's. He also said that…Republicans don't make an honest living, that Tom DeLay should be in jail (despite the fact that DeLay has not been charged with a crime), and that the Republican Party is "…pretty much a white, Christian party."
The New York Times, the flagship paper of the Left, has not reported any of Dean's statements. Moreover, the conservative Media Research Center reports that before Dean's tirade last week, none of the broadcast networks had reported on his controversial comments in their evening newscasts.
Most people realize that if any high profile conservative had said anything similar about the Democrats, the New York Times and major TV news networks would have been all over such outrageous behavior. But then the New York Times and the majority of the mainstream media are not unbiased, they are not fair, and they are certainly not balanced.
Here in Alabama we are also witnessing the erosion of public confidence in the news media. In particular, during the referendum on Amendment 1 in 2003, many Alabamians were offended by some in the newspaper media that they believe crossed the line between expressing an editorial opinion justifying support for the $1.2 billion tax increase to outright campaigning for its passage. And many Alabamians were offended by the unjustified and sometimes erroneous attacks against those that opposed it.
Editors have a right to express their opinion on issues. After all, an editorial is the opinion of the editors. The same holds true for opinion columns such as this one. These are opinions, not news stories. But in every case the opinions expressed by either side should be based on accurate information, respectful of the perspectives of others, and written in a manner that contributes to the public debate instead of attacking the credibility of those that disagree. Unfortunately, at times those of us that write have all failed to live up to this standard.
A current example of this can be seen in the one-sided attacks against John Giles and the Christian Coalition, and the complete failure by the Alabama media to look into the money trail that leads to the state legislators leading the attack. The calls for a criminal investigation into the Christian Coalition are bogus and I assume that most in the Alabama media know this to be true and have chosen to remain silent because of their personal disdain for the Christian Coalition. The objective of the media should be to push for legislative action to require full disclosure of the original source of all political contributions. Instead, at least up to this point, the media coverage of this issue has become a misdirected assault against one side.
Whether it is at the national or state level, across the board, the mainstream news media no longer even pretends to be objective. It has become the almost exclusive domain of liberal demagogues. As a result, people are increasingly tuning them out, turning them off, tossing their newspapers and magazines subscription notices in the trash, and turning to other venues for their news. If the mainstream media wants to be included, they can become more objective and more balanced or they can choose to become even more irrelevant to the majority of the people.
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