PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
● Shot:
If you follow the trendline of plummeting trust in newspapers, as just updated by Gallup, you could make an argument that by the year 2030 or so, 0 percent of respondents will say they have any “confidence” in newspapers and TV news.
It sounds ridiculous, but that’s the direction the data is headed. In 1979, 51 percent of those polled said they had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspaper journalism. But in Gallup’s latest poll this week, the number dropped to 16 percent, marking a steep four-and-a-half decade decline. Confidence in TV news has fared even worse, dropping from 46 percent in 1991 to 11 percent today.
Will the last poll respondent to lose confidence in newspapers and TV news, please cancel his subscription and turn off his TV?
This downer news about the news — and its hell-bound trajectory — surely measures something, but what? Other surveys by the Pew Research Center and the Reuters Institute bring similar findings. Could it be that newspapers are demonstrably worse than they were decades ago? No. Would anybody who was reading newspapers in 1979 say that? No, any honest assessment would find today’s newspapers more timely and accurate, fairer, and often better-written than the newspapers of 1979. So, what gives?
—Jack Shafer, “You Trust the Media More Than You Say You Do. A new poll shows confidence in the press is still sinking. Don’t believe it,” Politico, July 20.
It must have been quite a miraculous turnaround for the media in the last 14 years:
● Chaser:
In 1993, novelist Michael Crichton riled the news business with a Wired magazine essay titled “Mediasaurus,” in which he prophesied the death of the mass media—specifically the New York Times and the commercial networks. “Vanished, without a trace,” he wrote.
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“[T]he American media produce a product of very poor quality,” he lectured. “Its information is not reliable, it has too much chrome and glitz, its doors rattle, it breaks down almost immediately, and it’s sold without warranty. It’s flashy but it’s basically junk.”
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As we pass his prediction’s 15-year anniversary, I’ve got to declare advantage Crichton. Rot afflicts the newspaper industry, which is shedding staff, circulation, and revenues. It’s gotten so bad in newspaperville that some people want Google to buy the Times and run it as a charity! Evening news viewership continues to evaporate, and while the mass media aren’t going extinct tomorrow, Crichton’s original observations about the media future now ring more true than false. Ask any journalist.
—Jack Shafer, “Michael Crichton, Vindicated,” Slate, May 29, 2008.