In 1972, during the midst of the Watergate scandal, Gallup first voted for Americans to measure trust in the media. 68% said that. Four years later, in 1976, it rose to 72%.
Gallup still asks about issues with consumers, media confidence is now at an all-time low of 31%, a slow burn that is ongoing ongoing for decades.
So it is fitting that inside Gallup’s Washington, DC headquarters, media executives and cavalry talents were waiting to come up with not only for the reason that American media’s trust had been eroded, but also for what they could do to reverse that trend.
The Gallup building hosted Semafor innovations to restore confidence in Semafor’s news. Semafor co-founders Ben Smith and Justin Smith, Media Editor’s Max Tani Grilling Guests, are grilling about the unfortunate situation.
It also doubled as a meeting of media reporters (the New York Times had a true delegation of journalists in the room). There, almost every journalist covering the beat seemed to be taking furious notes during discussions, announcing the unfortunate situation at the cocktail party.
It also kicked off with something strong as CNN CEO Mark Thompson opened up a conversation with Thani, saying he didn’t trust the media.
“If I’m different from a considerable number of people, I certainly think that in legacy media there are more questionable viewers than media-dependent viewers,” Thompson said. “I think we have to use the Cleanex box to dry our eyes about loss of trust and think about how we can somehow reconstruct a more adult relationship. Rather than thinking of it as sheep that we need to trust our audience and believe everything we say, we accept that they are a challenging group of people who need to raise our game to raise our game.”
To this end, Thompson and others who attended argued that Gallup probably hadn’t returned in the 1970s, and that more uncertainty would likely swirl amid “digital democratization and the chaos of respect in politics.”
Or, as Cesar Conde, chairman of NBCuniversal News Group, said, the media is at a “inflection point” and the industry needs to adapt accordingly.
Or, when the former Fox News host became a podcaster, Meggin Kelly said, “The (media) did its own, it was a tragedy, I saw it happen.”
“To some extent, I used to be a legacy media and it’s sad that I decided to go this way,” she added, but her criticism seemed to focus on the biases of the people who make the news. “I think this country would be better if you had an older version of CNN and an original version of MSNBC.”
So, what can media do?
Perhaps being more calm is part of the equation.
“When you’re a journalist or editor, distance is always helpful,” says the editor of Prime Minister Emma Tucker’s Wall Street Journal. “If people leave the news and don’t trust it, it’s on us that we win that trust. When we approach the story that we are observers, we’re very clear that we’re not participants.”
“What I think more people need to do, and what I tried to do, is to remove the emotions from that, and remove the emotions from covering the news,” added Fox News Anchor Bret Baier. “And I think it’s been a problem for many years. Some people got emotional about it and lost a large portion of their audience.”
Or perhaps more transparency is what your audience needs. In the 1970s, Walter Cronkite was “the Voice of God,” but today, perhaps being honest with your audience about your perspective and what you’re learning about what you’re writing can help news brands stand out. As Thompson pointed out, audiences may prefer to be more involved in the news.
“Individual beat reporters talk to you directly as readers, viewers, explain what they are working on, how they are working on it… you can get to know Byline,” said Joe Kahn, editor of the New York Times. “All of these are part of trust.”
“We continue to talk about ways to ensure we are trusted.
Alternatively, news outlets can lean against a portion of the media and leaning towards local news where they hold more effectively a level of trust from the audience.
“One of the things you can actively do as a profession is that you have to invest in local journalism,” Conde said. “The backbone of our business is our local TV stations. That’s a huge competitive advantage for us.”
“We have 200 newsrooms across the country, nearly 3,000 local journalists, and every quarter, we sit with the heads of those newsrooms and say, ‘What do you have in the docket?” What are the people in your community interested in? “We really are far more responsive to that,” Maher said. “For me, that’s the absolute difference in the definition of NPR. What are the people in your community interested in?”
And then there’s the news. Reporting has its challenges, but even Kelly says she relies on journalists in the field to provide facts that can let her know her monologue.
And then there’s the early signal that we’re at Boomtime for the news.
“News are good for business,” Khan said. “And as I know since this first month, Trump is the most newspaper reporter I’ve ever seen occupying an oval office.”
