Would You Buy a Used Car from this Reporter?

By Gordon Hopkins I really should find a more respected line of work. Maybe thief.You think I’m kidding. Try counting the number of movies that portray newspaper reporters as the heroes. Okay, how many you got? Really. That’s all? I thought sure there’d be more than that.Now try coming up with movies where thieves are the heroes. Come on, now. Don’t tell me you can’t think of any. They call them “heist” movies. Does that make it easier?Okay, that’s enough. You can stop counting now. I think I made my point.By the way, however many you came up with, add one. George Clooney just announced “Ocean’s 14” is in the works. They tell me this is National Newspaper Week. That’s part of the reason I’m drawn to the subject today.They also tell me that the latest Gallup poll, just released, shows a new historic low in public confidence in mass media. According to that poll, only 28 percent of U.S. adults reported a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in news media. That’s a decline from 31 percent in 2024 and 40 percent in 2020.Of course, “mass media” covers a lot of territory, including newspapers, television and radio. I would suspect cable TV and the internet are probably bringing down the average for the rest of us. I can cite a poll to back that up. Emerson College Polling conducted a survey in April of this year to compare trust in traditional news media versus social media. The results were contradictory, yet totally predictable.Social media is the least trusted news source. It is also the main news source for 37 percent of Americans, 64 percent of those under 30 years of age. According to that survey, 46 percent encountered “news” about current events that they thought was true, but later found out to be incorrect or just flat out fake. My guess is, the other 56 percent have also encountered wrong or fake “news.” They just haven’t figured it out yet.Interestingly enough, the Emmerson poll also breaks down just who people think is to blame for the dissemination of misinformation or “fake news.” Social media and cable TV are tied for first place at 19 percent each. Meanwhile, near the bottom of that poll are newspapers at just 3 percent, tied with “something else.” For the sake of full disclosure, there was one news source that was lower than newspapers. Radio news was at 1 percent. However, the margin of error for the poll was +/- 3 percent, so I’m not prepared to say radio is more trusted than newspapers just yet.The bottom line is this. Americans don’t trust social media. They admit they don’t trust it. Yet, they still get most of their news from it.You see the problem we have here?

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