The U.S. legacy media's Trump Derangement Syndrome, which reached a climax with the Russiagate hoax, led to its current loss of credibility.
Getting Trump Was More Important to Some Journalists Than Getting the Story Right | Reason - J.D. Tuccille:
February 3, 2023 - "To retain journalistic credibility, getting a story right is more important than pursuing a crusade. That's a fair takeaway from a report published this week by the Columbia Journalism Review dissecting the so-called Russiagate saga, during which former President Donald Trump was accused of colluding with Russian officials to win the 2016 election. While pursuing the story, many journalists went well beyond their traditional role of scrutinizing powerful officials and not only openly picked a side in America's escalating political warfare but committed to proving a literal conspiracy theory true, no matter the evidence.
"It didn't go well. 'The end of the long inquiry into whether Donald Trump was colluding with Russia came in July 2019, when Robert Mueller III, the special counsel, took seven, sometimes painful, hours to essentially say no,' former New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth writes at the beginning of his detailed analysis. His old employer was at the center of the frenzy and its editors still defend their efforts, he adds. 'But outside of the Times' own bubble, the damage to the credibility of the Times and its peers persists, three years on, and is likely to take on new energy as the nation faces yet another election season animated by antagonism toward the press. At its root was an undeclared war between an entrenched media, and a new kind of disruptive presidency, with its own hyperbolic version of the truth.'
"The whole piece is worth reading, but make yourself a pot of coffee or crack open a bottle of wine — it's long. Nobody comes off looking especially good. That's true of the former president, though the flaws it reveals in Trump are nothing new.... It's true of the FBI agents who joined with too many journalists to fan each other into a hopeful frenzy over the Steele dossier and its assertions that Trump was Putin's puppet. And it's especially true of those members of the press who shed credibility by committing to a narrative that didn't pan out.
"'Before the 2016 election, most Americans trusted the traditional media and the trend was positive, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer,' Gerth notes. 'Today, the U.S. media has the lowest credibility—26 percent—among forty-six nations, according to a 2022 study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism'. That Reuters study is echoed by other studies finding minimal trust in the media. But distrust is unevenly spread.
"'Americans' trust in the media remains sharply polarized along partisan lines, with 70 percent of Democrats, 14 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of independents saying they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence,' according to Gallup polling in October 2022. That divide is explained by the public perception that the media is not only biased, but out to push an agenda without regard for honesty. Americans "suspect that inaccuracies in reporting are purposeful, with 52 percent believing that reporters misrepresent the facts, and 28 percent believing reporters make them up entirely,' a Gallup/Knight poll found in 2020....
"Strictly speaking, there's nothing wrong with journalists having a point of view, so long as they're open about it and emphasize getting the story right. You're reading a libertarian publication right now.... A partisan press is well-rooted in American history, from the newspapers that gleefully tormented the early presidents to the Republican and Socialist newspapers over which my grandparents screamed at each other. Efforts at 'objectivity' in news coverage—however successful—didn't really become the norm until after World War II. And it's likely a passing norm as journalists re-embrace partisanship....
"Beyond Objectivity: Producing Trustworthy News in Today's Newsrooms, published last week by the Knight-Cronkite News Lab, found that 'a growing number of journalists of color and younger white reporters, including LGBTQ+ people, believe that objectivity has become an increasingly outdated and divisive concept that prevents truly accurate reporting informed by their own backgrounds, experiences and points of view." Authors Leonard Downie Jr., formerly of the Washington Post, and Arizona State University journalism professor Andrew Heyward wisely recommend that post-objectivity newsrooms should be open with their staff and the public about their core beliefs. But, troublingly, they also suggest that newsroom leaders should 'move beyond accuracy to truth.' It's really hard to get to any sort of truth if you bypass accuracy....
"If more of the journalists pursuing the Russiagate story had been scrupulous about getting the facts right, they might have noticed that a story that many wanted to be true was remarkably thin and, ultimately, inaccurate. Failing to perform due diligence did the media no favors when the facts finally emerged and further eroded public trust.... In the end, no matter what ideologies or causes motivate journalists, nobody will put faith in us if we fail to get the story right."
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