Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Restoring Trust in the News Media

Reporting the news objectively is nearly impossible. Journalists who claim to be objective are living in a dream world. There is no way Brian Williams, Katie Couric, and Charles Gibson are objective. No way.

Reporters and journalists claiming to be objective are a big reason people don't trust the news media these days. One recent national poll reported that only 55.9% of Americans surveyed expect the news media to tell them the truth. That's sad.

Here's an idea for improving trust in the news media from a guy lots of people trusted:
"I think any one worth his salt is for or against certain things. It's
going to come through if only in the selection of what goes on the air and what
goes into the wastebasket. So it seems more honest for me to call it 'Paul
Harvey News and Comment'. That way listeners know they're getting their
news from my perspective." -- Paul Harvey
I like it. Don't pretend to be objective. Be honest. Make your perspective clear. Reveal your biases and prejudices. It worked pretty well for Paul Harvey.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Bill's perspective as always is smart. But I would go a step further. One of the reaons people don't trust the media.....is that they are no longer looked at as "protectors of our free speech/constitition"".......corporate culture has hit this hard...paying journalists who have to do a lot of intelligent work 50k a year. People really do forget......that doing real "journalism" takes a lot of hard digging/work/combined with the right amount of questions with a tag of ethics. This is much harder work then lifting stuff off newspapers and calling it google news.