We're losing trust, drifting from skepticism to cynicism

Tempers flared last week, as Democrats sought to cast blame for the Republican landslide - I was particularly galled when a friend laid the blame on, “newspapers who are too chicken to …”

Hold it right there. Losing my cool was a regular occurrence 30 years ago but it takes a lot to get my Irish at age 64.

Journalists, particularly the people in the newspaper business, are the most courageous people I know.

Yes, soldiers and cops are brave but in my industry we don’t carry guns, at least not yet.

When I started in this business, most of my colleagues shared one primary goal: to get to the truth and then communicate that truth to our readers.

But truth has traveled a bumpy road lately and because of that, our readers’ healthy skepticism has drifted toward cynicism. A recent Gallup poll shows a precipitous drop in the perceived credibility of journalists. As of last year, only 19 percent of those polled rated journalists “very high” on the honesty and ethics scale.

Members of Congressmen fared even worse at just six percent but we shouldn’t take comfort in that - we bear some of the blame for that mistrust. There’s plenty of blame to go around but I’d like to share my perspective of how my industry has changed after 40 years in this business.

When I first stepped upon this path in 1981, there were two kinds of journalism students - those who wanted to make the world a better place and those who wanted to be famous. Or, as we used to joke, the ugly ones and the pretty ones.

The pretty ones wanted to be television reporters and the ugly ones (newspaper reporters) looked down their non-telegenic noses at their television counterparts. That prejudice lasted until the internet came along, bringing with it, social media and in particular, Twitter in 2006. Now, it seemed, every journalist could be famous.

The fame trap, as most Americans recognize, is that the story inevitably becomes about the reporter. When the reporter inserts themselves into a story it is perceived by the reader as subjective or opinion.

They are right, Journalists aren’t entirely objective and the best ones recognize their biases and guard against bringing them into the story.

Well, that’s how it used to be. If a Republican reader believes that I’m a Democrat and a Democratic reader believes me to be a Republican then I can sleep well, knowing I’ve done my job, because they really don’t know, not if I’ve set out to find the truth rather than to sell my personal agenda. That’s what I was taught to believe and that’s how I practice my trade today - I try to recognize my biases and use that knowledge to report fairly. When I stop questioning my own bias, my greatest mentor told me, it’s time to turn in your pencil.

Too many journalists today don’t seem to recognize their biases - and that’s where we’ve lost the public’s trust.

When Twitter first arrived, advertising revenues at newspapers were declining - it was being overtaken first by television and then by all the media as it careened toward the internet. That’s when newsrooms across America were decimated, as corporate raiders began buying newspapers and then stripped them of their highest paid and (hopefully) most valuable assets - the mentors.

The bean counters in our business evaluated newsrooms and told management, “you can fire three young reports or one old editor,” and a lot of young journalists lost their mentors.

Now we have a generation of reporters who never had someone to guide them. This is an overstatement but I can’t seem to throw a rock without hitting a disgruntled journalist who was either fired in a cost-saving scheme or has just given hope that it was all really worth it.

So how does a journalist remain skeptical? We consult multiple sources - surround the story as The Times used to say.

And always consider the source of the information - does the source have an agenda that they’re trying to conceal?

Perhaps the source is some soulless robot. Social media feeds are based upon algorithms designed to reinforce your beliefs - facts be damned - that’s a self-perpetuating problem made worse because we’ve stopped talking to those with whom we disagree.

Algorithms are subtly telling us that we’re right to hate those who disagree with our views so what are we to do? We disengage.

Thanksgiving is almost here - the holiday that once forced us to eat too much and talk to our relatives is now segregated by political bias.

What would the Pilgrims say?