With media distrust at an all-time high, journalists must do some soul-searching

Just about every day a new poll drops — and when it shows how unpopular President Trump is, the so-called mainstream media can’t wait to blast it across the screen. Breaking news! Flashing graphics! Panels of experts nodding gravely.

Bad news for the president is good news for liberals — whether they’re in the media or just watching it.

But there’s one poll the media treats like it has a contagious disease. It comes out every year from Gallup. And it measures something inconvenient: trust in the media.

According to the latest numbers, Gallup found that just 28 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. That’s down from 31 percent the year before — and 40 percent five years ago.

Twenty-eight percent. If a corporation posted such numbers, reporters would smell scandal. But when it’s their own industry? Crickets.

In my 28 years at CBS News, I don’t recall hearing any of my colleagues agonize over why so many Americans didn’t trust us. I heard a lot of defensiveness. I heard a lot of rationalizing, but not much soul-searching.

Steven Brill once put it this way: “When it comes to arrogance, power, and lack of accountability, journalists are probably the only people on the planet who make lawyers look good.” That’s not exactly a Hallmark card — but it stings because there’s truth in it.

Whenever criticism about bias surfaces, many in the media circle the wagons. They blame right-wing propagandists, accusing them of hurling false accusations of bias to score political points. They blame social media. They blame Trump. And in fairness to my fellow journalists, let me acknowledge that at times they may have a legitimate point. The media’s partisan critics have their own biases. But what journalists rarely do is look in the mirror and ask, “Could we possibly be part of the problem?”

I have been a working journalist since 1967. In all that time, I cannot remember hearing even one newsroom conversation that began with, “Maybe the American people are right about us.”

That’s why a recent column by Gerry Baker in The Wall Street Journal caught my eye. He made a point that cuts to the heart of the issue. The most important form of bias, he argued, isn’t necessarily what gets reported — it’s what doesn’t. It is the selective outrage. It is the investigative zeal, reserved for some institutions but not for others.

Corporations? Fair game. Conservative politicians? Open season. But labor unions, bureaucracies, academic institutions — the kind of places that lean left? The scrutiny is far less intense.

And Baker adds something that should make every journalist uncomfortable: Just when America most needs a trusted press to hold power accountable, too many practitioners have squandered the public’s faith.

That’s not coming from some talk radio host. That’s coming from a serious, thoughtful journalist.

Now, at the risk of violating some unwritten newsroom rule, I’m about to quote a journalist I have known all my life — me. In my book “Arrogance,” I wrote: “If arrogance were a crime, a lot of journalists would be in jail.”

I meant it then. I mean it now.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: The public didn’t wake up one morning and decide to distrust the press because a politician told them to. Trust erodes over time. It erodes when reporters confuse activism with journalism. It erodes when mistakes are downplayed, corrections are buried, and ideological blind spots go unexamined.

And here’s the part nobody in the media likes to hear: Credibility isn’t a birthright. It’s earned. And it can be lost.

If journalists want Americans to take their polling seriously, maybe they should start taking their own poll seriously. Not with defensiveness. Not with excuses. But with humility — something that’s in short supply in America’s newsrooms.

Because until the press is willing to apply the same scrutiny to itself that it applies to everyone else, that 28 percent number isn’t going up. And no number of pointing fingers will change that.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him @BernardGoldberg.

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