Can't Trust The News Media Anymore

         After church this morning, my wife told me about two separate situations that she had come across, both of which illustrate that the news media can no longer be trusted to reflect the news honestly, or with any trace of objectivity. They have totally destroyed any chance that we could consider them believable. And it will take who knows how many years before we should be willing to trust them again, if ever. Read these two instances and decide for yourself.

         First, remember all those negative statements and insinuations leveled toward Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign that supposedly came from someone within the McCain camp? It was revealed recently in The New York Times that all of those were part of a hoax. That the whole thing was planned simply as a vehicle on which to base a TV special later on, about the hoax itself. These people never gave a thought to what their little stunt might do to Ms. Palin’s reputation or career; they only thought about what they could gain from the stunt. Not to mention the effect these accusations might have had on the outcome of the election itself. How many people changed their minds after hearing these things, and decided to change their vote to Obama? We’ll never know. Nor will we ever know which one of them would have won the election had it all been done on the up and up. And the worst part is, it remains to be seen, but there’s obviously a chance our country could end up being worse off because of these selfish, short-sighted people.

         And second, my wife saw a clip of two TV news reporters, from two different networks, one interviewing the other. The gist of the conversation she saw went something like this:



         “All your positive statements were on Obama’s side and all your negative statements were toward McCain.”

         “That’s part of my job.”

         “What do you mean?”

         “That’s part of my job of getting Obama elected president.”

         “That’s not right. You’re supposed to be reporting the news, not making it into what you want it to be.”



         My first thought when my wife told me about these two events was, “Just how much more of this type of thing is going on that we don’t even know about?”

         We have to be able to trust our news media to be fair, objective, accurate, and independent in the news they report to us, so that all of us are able to confidently make our own choices for the future. In regard to politics, and everything else. 

         My wife said that this is the first year the news media had turned to blogs for information. If our news media are no more intelligent than to believe that what they read in blogs is accurate and reliable, we’re all in real trouble. As long as even one member of the news media  continues to report information without verifying its accuracy, and its source or continues to tilt their reporting in favor of one particular party or candidate over the others, the public will not be able to trust a single member of the media, nor what they tell us.

         This kind of biased reporting, especially if it is done to forward someone’s own agenda, not only tarnishes the time-honored  reputation of the news media that was established two hundred years ago with the first newspapers in this country, it destroys it. In the eyes of John Q. Public, our news media have now become totally unreliable and  untrustworthy. And it will take them years, if not generations, to regain our trust.

         For many, many years, when the general public were asked what people they genuinely trusted, one of the names that was always in the top five on that list, and probably still is, is Walter Cronkite. For years, as far as many are concerned, he was CBS news. I sincerely wonder about the shame he must feel at what his cherished profession has become, especially this year.

         It’s time the public makes it clear that we will not tolerate the kind of biased, dishonest, win-at-all-cost news reporting that seems to have spread like a virus through this year’s election. The heads of news organizations should be held accountable for all aspects of the news their people report, especially in terms of accuracy, reliability, honesty  and independence. If their jobs were on the line just as those of sports team managers and business owners are, they might just keep a better eye on what their people are reporting, and where they get their information. And reporters would understand that they had to do the job right because if the boss upstairs gets in trouble over something they report, their job would be in jeopardy too. And with the public exposure all reporters have, they hopefully would realize that once they were caught reporting inaccurate, biased information, especially when it can affect another person’s livelihood, that they themselves just might not be able to get a job in any reputable news organization for decades to come. And that would be as it should be. 

         Until the news media can prove to us that they have totally cleaned up their act, and by that I mean proven it more than once, through more than one election, maybe even five or more, including their reporting on any major world, national or local events between those elections, we should not trust a single word that we hear from them. They have a lot to prove; I think it’s time we make it clear they’d better get started.