Trusting the Media

This week, I got the FT Weekend instead of the usual stack of recycling that is the Sunday Papers. My usual is the Observer. Sometimes I buy the Sunday Tribune, rarely the Sunday Independent and almost never (despite growing up with it) the Sunday Times. The regularity with which I buy these papers is, indeed very much in proportion to
a - their liberal bent and
b - the lack of stereotypical media-mogul multi millionaire/billionaire at the helm.
There is little more reasoning that goes into these decisions. They are just the decisions that are.
In the FT Weekend, there was an interesting article about trust in the media. It was a teaser for an essay competition, but interesting nonetheless. The competition is to write about change. This article looked at changing the newspaper industry. Or, more accurately, the relationship between newspapers and readers. The writer in question, Martin Dickinson would like to change "...the relentlessly negative public image of the UK press and television."
His article is a good start. For one thing, it engages with the reader, rather than disparaging the journalistic or educational quality of other publications (which is the usual playground for such arguments). However, I think he misses the point of the public distaste for journalism. He says journalistic standards have slipped ("Newspapers seem less accurate than they used to be - and less concerned about being so."). But there is a whiff of 'the public don't understand the journalist's lot' in the article ("Writing the 'first rough draft of history' is not easy, particularly against the background of politicians' perpetual spin and an unhelpful legal framework"). I would argue that the public distrust for journalism is not a matter of who's telling the truth, but who's telling the right truth.
This goes back to the glut of feature-film documentaries and so called 'counter culture' essayists of the nineties. Michael Moore, Naomi Klein, et al. They came on the scene, and showed us all what's what. Or at least they thought they were showing us what's what. Or, maybe we just thought they were showing us what's what. The upshot is, no one can now believe they know what's going on. If one were to say they do, those gathered would nod their heads politely, and wonder how someone could still be so naíve. Connections between large corporates, governments and the media became de rigeur conversation pieces, whether over champagne in hotel lobbies, or over cider in fields. This idea gathered force and became, both in the UK and Ireland, the starting point for any media discussion. If you read it in a paper, the next question would be 'what paper?' If you saw it on TV, 'which channel?' If you heard it on the radio, 'which station?' There were no longer facts - there were items read, heard or viewed, which could be held up to scrutiny based on the corporate connections and ruling government in the country of publication. Add to this the rise of two forms of journalism: shock journalism and celebrity journalism. These forms, I'll discuss in detail elsewhere. But their rise made facts even harder to find under the wealth of adjectives, adverbs and general advertising of causes.
The result was nobody trusted anyone. A healthy disrespect for authority transformed into an unhealthy distrust, and indeed, disregard for authority. In the worst case scenario, general apathy set in (No one can stop these huge corporations, and they are controlling the world, so let's hear about the grief of families, the stretch marks of celebrities and the theories on how to distinguish natural body parts from those that have been 'enhanced').
Returning to the point, this has left journalism in a pretty sad state. There is an automatic belief in publications being 'right wing' or 'left wing' that is worn on shoulders so that market share can be capitalized. The same news may be reported by every publication, but the reports will be different, depending on what people believe the news 'means'. The question of meaning is even more interesting, but too big to go into here. The important thing here is that people subscribe (intellectually, at least) to those media that reflect their own political bias. And the journals in question have embraced them.
Adjectives, adverbs and advertising for ideals have become staple points for journalism. A war in a previously unheard-of country could be a struggle against fascistic dictatorship, a want for a market economy, a need for human rights, or a disruption in trade routes or industrial production. It is hardly ever the murder of civilians, the inability to buy milk or the chaos of existence. In the papers and on the TV news, it shouldn't be any of these.
Journalism should just explain the war in the unknown country. It is up to analysts to decide what the war 'means' in economic or social terms. It is up to artists to decide what the war 'means' in humane terms. And it's up to the reader to decide what the war 'means' to them.
We stumble upon another problem here: the reader. Along with the shock-you docu-jocks, the rise of voyeurism and celebrity fascination, the reader's mind has atrophied. People throw bricks into MacDonald's windows, hours after they got a Big Mac there. Critical evaluation has gone out the window. In terms of media, the market now is for opinion, not facts. Who can blame the papers if they dictate that all their journalists should now write articles that provide a definitive 'outcome' that results from the 'situation' they are reporting? This will sell, because people want to know. They want to know, but they don't want to think. I'll go into more detail elsewhere, but this is a creeping problem. It's not something the papers have thrust upon us. It's not something that anyone can be immune from.
And so, we have a situation where newspapers provide the opinions their readers want to hear. Much in the same way that fast food restaurants (can you call them restaurants?) provide their eaters with what they want to taste. The backlash comes from Starbucks customers complaining about Costa shops. Woops, their franchises. What I mean is 'right wing' readers railing against 'left wing' publications. Or, more commonly, 'left wing' readers railing against 'right wing' publications. This is where the distrust lies. The distrust itself is misplaced, because it isn't based on where the truth lies - it's based on where the ideology lies.