Every day we organize our
lives around trust in people we have never met. Listening to the weather
report, waiting for a bus, asking for directions, eating at a restaurant,
putting money in a bank or accepting someone else’s check, giving out our
credit card number on the internet, and in dozens of other ways, our daily
lives are based on trusting that people will be honest and do what they say
they will. Without high levels of trust in other people and the institutions
they represent, the free flow of goods and services on which we depend would
stop, and our social interactions would shrivel.
During my lifetime, trust in
public institutions has fallen. Trust in government was very
high in the postwar period, remaining at nearly 80% during the Kennedy
years. My generation is partly responsible for increased skepticism about what
government tells us. During the 1960s the unprecedented suspicion of young
Americans toward people in power turned out to be justified. The government
lied to us about the war it was waging in Vietnam. LBJ’s fabrication about the
Tonkin Gulf incident was only the most egregious example. Year after year,
official military reports about the war consistently painted a false picture of
success. The dogged and dangerous reporting of print and TV journalists
eventually brought us a truer image of endless stalemate. President Nixon’s
dishonesty served as further proof that our government was not to be trusted to
tell us uncomfortable truths. I remember devouring the daily news as the
Watergate scandal developed. Government lied and covered up, media uncovered
and revealed what we deserved to know.
Trust in government fell
precipitously after 1965, varying between 20% and 40% (except for a brief
jump right after 9/11) until recently, hitting only 17% earlier this year. This
plunge was common to both parties, all generations, blacks, whites and
Hispanics.
The self-congratulatory myths
about American society as uniquely free and equal drilled into our heads at
school were exploded by the realities brought to light by the civil rights
movement. The American past had been whitewashed by generations of authorities
in schools and colleges, media and government. High school history texts and
college courses portrayed slavery as a beneficent system. The mass murder of
Native Americans, the persistence of lynching into the 20th century,
the ubiquity of discrimination in North and South were hidden from view. Again
the media took the lead in revealing the truth about systematic discrimination,
displaying for all to see the violence behind segregation.
Although the unpleasant
revelations of the late 1960s and 1970s damaged popular trust in leading
institutions, the skepticism they engendered is healthy. No government should
be trusted to tell the full truth about how well its policies are working.
Taken as a whole, the media tend to provide a rosy picture of our society. But
while “Father Knows Best” embodied the white myths about American life, news
broadcasts and articles brought the disturbing information about war and racism
into our homes.
The series of Gallup polls
shows the broad
decline in trust in major American institutions since 1975. The proportions
of Americans who said that they had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in
organized religion fell from 68% to 36%, in Congress from 40% to 11%, in the
presidency from 52% to 38%, in public schools from 62% to 29%, in the medical
system from 80% to 36%, in banks from 60% to 30%, in television news from 46%
to 18%, and in newspapers from 39% to 23%. These are startling numbers. Trust
in the military and the police has not fallen.
A Pew
survey at the end of last year demonstrates the current widespread distrust
of people in power in America. 17% of those surveyed believe that members of
Congress act unethically “all or most of the time”, and another 64% think this
happens “some of the time”. Leaders of technology companies, journalists, and
religious leaders are also mistrusted by two-thirds of Americans. The best
ratings are given to military leaders and public school principals, but more
than half of the public thinks they, too, act unethically more than “a little”.
What has further eroded trust
is the concerted partisan attack on the institution that has most consistently
delivered the information we desperately need – the media. In response to more
openly critical news coverage of the American status quo, conservatives made
the news itself into the enemy. Nixon was the first President to make the press
into a significant target, even though an amazing 93%
of American newspapers had endorsed him in 1972. Once the Watergate scandal
began to dominate the news, Nixon attacked the media as unfair. In late 1972, he
told Henry Kissinger, “Never forget, the press is the enemy, the press is
the enemy…write that on the blackboard 100 times.” Vice President Spiro Agnew
had been attacking news reporting since he took office in 1969.
For a long time, it appeared
that this Republican strategy had little effect on Republican voters. Surveys
from 1990 through 2005 showed that the difference between Republican and
Democratic respondents about their trust in the media was relatively small. Between
60% and 70% of Democrats thought that news organizations tended to favor one
side in their reporting, as did about 75% of Republicans. After 2006, as the
Bush administration lost popularity, more and more Republican voters turned
against the news. The mistrustful Republican proportion jumped to about 85%,
where it has remained. When Sarah Palin based her 2008 campaign on attacking
the “lamestream media”, she was preaching to the Republican base.
Most recently the mistrustful
Democratic proportion fell to 52%. Overall, trust in the news is very low, but
with significant
partisan differences: 35% of Democrats, but only 12% of Republicans say
they trust the information they get from national news organizations “a lot”. Less
than half of Republicans think journalists “provide fair and accurate
information” and less than one-third think they “cover all sides of an issue
fairly”, while these percentages for Democrats are 84% and 74%.
This partisan lack of trust
in the news is not healthy. Conservatives who mistrust national news
organizations have shifted their attention to openly biased and often
untruthful internet sources, like Breitbart News and Alex Jones’ Infowars.
There they absorb packaged nonsense which reinforces their prejudices, along
with more claims that the real news is “fake news”.
Skepticism about those who
wield power, including news organizations, is healthy when it encourages
careful criticism, fact-checking, an unwillingness to take opinion as fact.
Conservatives hate the mainstream media which reveals what they don’t want to
know, especially when their President is constantly shown to be a liar, and
perhaps a traitor to the Constitution.
Blind trust is foolish. Blind
distrust is dangerous.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
September 24, 2019
No comments:
Post a Comment