Article of the day, "Why doesn't anyone trust the media?"

Today, November 10.2025, a new column is being introduced on Markham's Slow News called "Article Of The Day." Most days an article about an article will be posted that looks at the various social systems that we all participate in. This first article is a about the media.

 Why doesn’t anyone trust the media? Harpers, November, 2025

Perhaps most telling is the changing relationship between media and political power. There is a palpable sense of surrender in the air. In December, ABC News agreed to pay President Trump $16 million to settle a defamation suit he had filed against the network. CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, later settled its own Trump lawsuit, also for $16 million, three weeks before securing Federal Communications Commission approval for its merger with Skydance Media. Trump has since filed a host of additional suits against media organizations, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and threatened the broadcast licenses of major networks.

All of this raises pressing questions: In an era of declining trust, industry collapse, and technological disruption, does the media, as we’ve historically understood it, have a future? What essential functions does professional journalism serve that cannot be replaced by other forms of information gathering and dissemination? And why, finally, do Americans view the media with such skepticism?

The article is composed of a panel discussion with four journalists none of whom seem to get the key reasons that the public no longer trusts traditional media. Here are a few reasons not discussed.

First, the rise of autocratic government is based on disinformation and propaganda so that the leaders can shape the truth in a direction favorable to their power grab and domination. There is an intentional and deliberate attempt to discredit truthful, accurate news reporting if the facts undermine their policies and procedures.

Second, under the misguided notion of “fair and balanced” the news media is reluctant to report the truth. The “both sideism” has destroyed the public's trust that there are facts and not just opinions about the facts.

Third, news has been turned over to entertainment interests and what is popular is more important than what is honest. Readers attention and engagement is based on “likes” and not on factual reporting.

Fourth, increasingly, audiences want communications that are cognitively consonant with their belief system rather than cognitively dissonant even if the cognitively dissonant information is true and accurate. Part of this tendency to avoid or dismiss the cognitively dissonant is just human nature and a great deal of it is a failure of our educational systems and culture to encourage curiosity and critical thinking. At the same time that the media is increasingly distrusted, science is under assault.

Having read this article, many more questions arise such as:

1. What will help people become more curious about facts and ideas that stretch their current belief system?

2. How can news media communicate truthful but unpopular ideas in a way that audiences are willing to listen and consider them?

3. How can truthful and honest communication be funded and morally supported if the audience doesn’t want to pay for it?

4. How can truth telling communicators be trained and supported in their difficult work?