Columnist Jim Slusher: Columnist Jim Slusher: Finding the relationship between trust, truth
World Press Freedom Day - its theme for 2023 "Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of Expression as a driver for all other human rights" - passed last week with an ominous message for news media in America as well as their audiences.
A new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization found that nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults blame the media for deepening political divides here.
And trust in "the news media" is at best wavering. A little over half the survey respondents said they have some degree of confidence in the media's ability to report the news fully and fairly, but only 16% of the total expressed strong confidence, and 45% said they have little to no confidence at all.
These are discouraging numbers to contemplate for those of us toiling in the news trenches. But for those of us who sincerely value truth, as well as trust, they are important to consider.
Note my emphasis on valuing truth as well as trust. It is not lost on me that the survey broke just after the nation's most-watched broadcast network news agency, Fox News, acknowledged knowingly publishing lies about the 2020 election in a $787.5 million civil court settlement. If there is anything that our current political divide tells us, it is that plain truth is not necessarily the decisive factor in attracting a reader or viewer's trust. Telling people what they want to hear or like to hear can well be even more influential than telling them raw truth, and the practice can be especially powerful if it shapes and selects facts so as to present a comforting, bias-confirming picture of "truth" that may or may not be entirely or even partially accurate.
News objectivity is a complex topic that has been debated, massaged, defined and redefined over and over since the early 20th century if not before. In the context of our times, it is especially useful for news organizations to take stock of not just whether their audiences trust them but why. We at the Daily Herald are acutely aware that we have strident critics from a wide range of political vantage points, and we do not discount any of them. Yet, we soldier on in a mission that seeks as far as possible to describe events accurately, fully and fairly, regardless of whatever political message they may convey to the person considering them.
That philosophy does not immediately secure for us the faith of all readers. Indeed, for many who look for and find in the reports we share evidence that justifies their distrust, it can have quite the opposite effect.
Still, our trust is that, ultimately, readers of all political and social philosophies most value unvarnished reporting and the effort, however imperfect, to let them decide for themselves how to shape their view of the world. And, even if they still find some other source more to their liking, we hope they will still hold us up as a standard to be compared against.
A fractured media landscape in the age of social media sorely tests Press Freedom Day's high-sounding vision of "freedom of expression as a driver for all other human rights." It doesn't take great powers of observation to see that unbridled freedom of expression can just as easily threaten rights as sustain them. But hopefully in such an age, discerning readers and viewers will continue to challenge both us and themselves, and somewhere out of that process, a justified relationship between truth and trust will be affirmed.
jslusher@dailyherald.com