2004 Annual Report - Newspaper Public Attitudes

What is driving what some have called a "credibility crisis?" In part it is a cultural divide. People think newspaper journalists are isolated and out of touch. In part, the credibility crisis is a disconnect over motive. Journalists think they are working in the public interest. The public thinks they sensationalize and report articles to make money.

This cultural divide is seen in various numbers. Some of them have to do with a sense that journalists are isolated. In a major 1999 survey conducted for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, for instance, a majority of the public, 53 percent, viewed the press as "out-of-touch with mainstream Americans." And 78 percent thought that journalists were more interested in the interests of their editors than their readers.¹⁰

Some of the numbers deal with the attitude of journalists. Two-thirds of the public viewed journalists as more cynical than people in other professions, according to the ASNE credibility study.¹¹

The other part of the crisis has to do with motive. More than half of those polled, 59 percent, told the ASNE study that newspapers were more concerned with making profits than with the serving the public interest. And half thought that advertisers swayed coverage. Pew surveys over the years similarly find a decline in the sense that journalists are serving the public interest.

This sense of lack of professionalism and sensationalizing to sell papers was clearly seen following the scandal in 2003 at The New York Times, particularly the news that the reporter Jayson Blair had engaged in extensive fabrication. The Times, which prides itself on respectability, took heat for the incident, which resulted in the resignations of the executive editor, Howell Raines, and the managing editor, Gerald Boyd.

But one of the saddest revelations to come from the scandal was that many people thought such unethical conduct was typical of newspapers. Nearly a quarter (22 percent) told a Pew survey in the summer of 2003 they thought that the practices engaged in by Blair happened frequently, while 36 percent said they thought it happened occasionally. And most of the public (58 percent) thinks journalists do not care about complaints of inaccuracies (only 35 percent think members of the press do care).¹² The credibility problem can be seen in polling data going back nearly 20 years. It is hardly limited to print journalism. Some of it clearly tracks the decline in public trust in all institutions, and thus is more cultural than something that the newspapers or even journalists generally can do anything about. But not all of it. And here is where newspapers can react.