{"id":15365,"date":"2025-04-23T08:06:21","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T12:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=15365"},"modified":"2025-04-23T08:25:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T12:25:40","slug":"can-we-trust-what-we-watch-and-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=15365","title":{"rendered":"can we trust what we watch and read?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>\u201cIn case you haven\u2019t noticed\u2026 journalism is in deep trouble. This is in large part because Americans have lost faith in journalists. According to Gallup, roughly two-thirds of Americans had a great deal of faith in the news media in 1970. Today, only 31% of Americans say the same \u2014 while 36% say they have no faith in the news media at all.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>How can that trust be rebuilt? Are we destined to live in a world of different realities and alternative facts? Should the mainstream media apologize for all they have ignored or covered up or gotten wrong over the past few years?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>To boil it all down: does real, honest journalism have a future in America?\u201d<\/em> \u2014 Bari Weiss, April 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is indeed interesting where people get their news from \u2014 that is, if they\u2019re still paying attention at all. The challenge, too, is that this thing that we call the \u201cmainstream media,\u201d as Weiss would attest, doesn\u2019t really represent the mainstream nor does it capture the attention of most of country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is no longer simply assumed that <em>NPR<\/em> is trustworthy. Same for longtime standard newspapers such as <em>The New York Times, New York Post<\/em> and <em>Washington Post,<\/em> especially each of their opinion pages. <em>ABC, CBS <\/em>and\u00a0 <em>NBC<\/em> are regularly doubted. And the trustworthiness of cable ventures <em>CNN, FOX News <\/em>and <em>MSNBC <\/em>have long been in question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what makes them trustworthy? What determines whether a journalism outlet is a reliable source of news?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s not simply bias; in fact, some would say there is no such thing as unbiased news. As said by the frequented Intramuralist source <em>All Sides,<\/em> it is <em>hidden<\/em> media bias that \u201cmisleads, manipulates and divides us.\u201d We would be wise, therefore, to learn how to spot it, rather than allow it to feed the narrative already building in our brains. Hence, we consider the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Does the source distinguish between editorials and fact?<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>When opinion is offered, is that clear? Do they say so?<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>How well-sourced are their stories? Are they transparent about who their sources actually are?<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>How much persuasive rhetoric do they use?<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Are they insulting of any?<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Are they prone to the use of sensationalism?<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Are they willing to report on a story in a way that\u2019s different than everyone else?<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Have they acknowledged places where they were wrong and corrected their mistakes?<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Do they present full context?<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Are there news events they are unwilling to talk about?<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>As for me, my primary news is read \u2014 not watched. I read <em>RealClearPolitics,<\/em> <em>All Sides <\/em>and <em>The Free Press<\/em> routinely. I will also tune into <em>Axios,<\/em> <em>Newsweek<\/em> and the <em>Wall Street Journal.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From a podcast perspective, that\u2019s where I will tune into podcasts with openly stated both right and left biases, with Bari Weiss\u2019s \u201cHonestly\u201d being my current fave. Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bari is smart, fair and witty woman. She\u2019s incredibly discerning. She is a Jewish lesbian and former writer for both the <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> and <em>New York Times. <\/em>She resigned from the <em>Times<\/em> in 2020 after \u201cconstant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views.\u201d In her resignation letter she said that intellectual curiosity was now considered a \u201cliability\u201d for the paper, evidence of the evaporating trustworthiness.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the more insightful podcast episodes I listened to recently was when Weiss met with the founders of <em>Axios, <\/em>persons who were previously respectively employed by <em>The Washington Post<\/em> and <em>Time.<\/em> They are persons believed to be credible, meaning not hidden with their bias. Together they had a conversation about the increasing mistrust of the media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Interestingly, they identified the following as what they believe to be the main factors as to why the media has taken such a credibility hit in the last decade: (1) the beginning of <em>Twitter,<\/em> in which groupthink was prominent and reporters began openly sharing their bias in full view\u2026 (2) the word policing that arose during the Covid years, with media leading the way in what we could\/could not say\u2026 (3) the response to Donald Trump\u2019s first election and the agendas in their succeeding coverage\u2026 and (4) the coverage of Joe Biden and his clear decline. Their point was that each of those aspects contributed to our current, collective mistrust of media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s wishing for more. It would just be nice to trust what we watch and read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Respectfully\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>AR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIn case you haven\u2019t noticed\u2026 journalism is in deep trouble. This is in large part because Americans have lost faith in journalists. According to Gallup, roughly two-thirds of Americans had a great deal of faith in the news media in 1970. Today, only 31% of Americans say the same \u2014 while 36% say they have &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=15365\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;can we trust what we watch and read?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-event"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15365"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15402,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15365\/revisions\/15402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}