Not to sound pathetic, but I’m accustomed to not having friends.
Well, let me say that another way: Those of us in journalism know that we’ll offend everybody at some time or another, and all those offended folks will think less of us. It’s an occupational hazard that goes along with our professional responsibility – which is, in the words of the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, just this: “Seek the truth and report it fully.”
I don’t mean to sound smug. But I’m not trying to be popular here – just accurate. And it’s a fact that “truth” sometimes depends upon who’s looking at it. So if you’re determined to find the truth and report it, you’ll offend people who have a reason to see things one way or another. Especially people whose goal is political power, which politicians gain by convincing people that their view of things is the right one.
And that’s is why journalists know that we are in a difficult spot right now – because we have even fewer friends than we’ve had before, at least over my lifetime. It’s actually an existential crisis for what I call the “truth-based media.”
I was a young journalist in the years just after no-holds barred reporting had exposed the Watergate scandal to the public. Americans valued the independent media then. In 1976, 72 percent of Americans told Gallup pollsters that they had a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in mass media. But by this year, less than one-third of the country voiced that trust; another third said they had “not very much” trust, and the remainder said they had “none at all.” And there’s a clear partisan skew: 54 percent of Democrats said they had high trust in the media, while only 27 percent of independents and 12 percent of Republicans did.
Donald Trump is partly to blame for that – he who has always valued loyalty over truth, and who often calls journalists “enemies of the people,” and incited his supporters to distrust anything that doesn’t glorify him. So his return to the White House is likely to make matters even worse for real reporting.
Trump has suggested that he will use the Federal Communications Commission to harass news broadcasters, by threatening to pull their broadcast licenses. He will surely try to zero-out taxpayer funding for public radio and television. He could bar reputable news organizations from the White House and federal agencies… get the Justice Department and the FBI to go after anybody in the federal government who talks to journalists without authorization… subpoena reporters to try to get them to reveal their sources… even use the Sedition Act to go after leakers. This will all have a chilling effect on the pursuit of truth.
It won’t matter, at first, to people who are already hostile to honest reporting. It’s not as though Trump will target, say, Fox News and other right-wing outlets. Nor will it trouble most of the online influencers who are increasingly powerful distributors of information to Americans. Those people are interested in drawing audience more than in projecting truth – because audience yields revenue.
You may not believe me, folks, but it is fact that almost without exception, journalists who work for the truth-based media are interested in doing the right thing – reporting the truth, that is – as opposed to generating profit. That ethic is imperiled just now by both market and political forces.
The legacy media used to be supported lavishly by advertising dollars, but most of that has migrated to digital outlets. Almost two-thirds of all the digital advertising now goes to three digital purveyors: Alphabet, which is the parent company of Google; Meta, which owns Facebook; and Amazon. That doesn’t leave much revenue to support real journalism.
Which is why it’s crucial for people who care about truth-telling in public life to support the truth-based media – whether it’s by subscribing to a local or a national newspaper, donating to your public radio station or backing the growing number of nonprofit news organizations that are covering state and national affairs.
You won’t always like what you read or hear. Lately, for example, we’ve heard angry liberals denounce The New York Times, claiming that the nation’s most influential news organization failed to adequately spotlight Trump’s malevolence and mental instability. You might weigh that against the conservative critique that the Times and other legacy media outlets have lost their audience specifically because they have been biased for the left – so that, as the conservative Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle wrote last week, the mainstream media are now reaching only what she called “a much smaller walled garden, full of nice liberals talking to each other.”
And there we are, in this difficult post-election season: hostile audiences on the left and the right, the business model that supported the free press for generations collapsing, and the coming power structure of the federal government poised to attack the truth-tellers.
So no, we don’t have many friends. But if you care about knowing the truth, I hope you will do what you can in the difficult years ahead to support those who are dedicated to bringing it to you – even if sometimes you don’t like them quite so much. We’re not supposed to be your pals; we’re just here to tell you the truth.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.