Rules for journalism
The Dunning–kruger effect is a cognitive bias stating that people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. There is Confirmation Bias, paying attention to information that reinforces held beliefs and ignoring evidence to the contrary. Ingroup Preference Bias is when people tend to divide themselves into groups, and then attribute positive attributes to their own group. The Ostrich Effect is avoiding bad news by ignoring data that might be negative. There should be an “It’s not MY fault” bias.
Globally, trust in journalists has never been any lower at 59 percent. That number is probably a little distorted by the percentage of “trust” from Uzbekistan (93 percent), Tanzania (90 percent), Rwanda (89 percent), and Myanmar (80 percent). Only 25 percent trust journalists in Taiwan and in the US, the press/media trust is at 40 percent. Only 26 percent in the UK trust journalists to “tell the truth.”
The press/media blames the “government,” individual politicians, “uneducated readers,” and Facebook for the lack of trust.
Gwen Aviles, doctoral candidate at the Columbia School of Journalism, writes: “I’m working on a story about journalists’ mental health since the work reporters do is so trauma-facing.” Robert Stacy Mccain, 35 years a journalist, replies: “Journalists have mental health problems because no genuinely sane person would ever get into this miserable racket. Nowadays, every 23-year-old J-school grad thinks he’s qualified, telling us How to Save Our Democracy. They don’t want to do any actual work, but you can find them on Twitter 24/7.”
Michael S. Schudson is professor of journalism in the graduate school of journalism of Columbia University. Mr. Schudson says: “Is too much made of the mistrust of journalists? Presidents from George Washington on judged newspapers to be full of lies.” Perhaps true. But then he writes, “Even if we can agree that trust in government and trust in the media were too high before Nixon, it might still be that trust today has sunk too low.”
The problem with that statement is that as early as 1998, trust in the press/media was only 53 percent, hardly “too high.”
However, Mr. Schudson does say, “It may be time for journalists to acknowledge that they write from a set of values, not simply from a disinterested effort at truth. This will not be easy.” The problem with that is, an “effort at truth” used to be the norm.
Jim Lehrer was an American journalist, novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and executive editor and news anchor for the PBS Newshour starting 1975 through 2009. He wrote his personal “Rules for Journalism.”
“Do not distort, lie, slant or hype. Do not falsify facts or make up quotes. Carefully separate opinion and analysis from news stories and clearly label it as such. Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes except in rare and monumental occasions. Acknowledge that objectivity may be impossible, but fairness never is.”
Robert Stacy Mccain goes on to write: “For years, my job included typing in the local bowling-league scores, which is about as low on the journalistic totem pole as it gets. The problem with most young journalists today is they never had to do any kind of grungy low-level local journalism. Instead, they graduated from Northwestern or Columbia and landed a job with one of those clickbait farms—huffpost, Buzzfeed, Vox—cranking out listicles and other worthless crap.”
Professor Schudson concludes, “There are worse things than being widely disliked.” It has nothing to do with being “disliked.” Finally, “It was not media action that reduced trust.” That may gain an award for lack of self-awareness.