Public confidence in newspapers has
been declining for more than a generation.
Now Gallup says only 20% of Americans
have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the institution that has
proclaimed itself the “public watchdog” for more than a couple centuries.
I think it’s been a long-running head
fake.
It’s somewhat surprising to me that
younger folks (18-34) have relatively positive attitudes toward
newspapers—America’s dailies and weeklies have notoriously lost their fight to
keep younger readers. Less than 20% of folks under 35 claim to have read a newspaper
yesterday. Even among this minority of readers, those with unfavorable
perceptions outnumber those with favorable views of newspapers.
Let’s push the point here: Gallup doesn’t
elaborate on the meaning of “have a great deal of confidence in newspapers.”
Confidence about what?
Journalists and newspaper owners have
always trumpeted their self-appointed role as a watchdog institution that
champions the interests of “the public.”
I’ve never seen any statistics on the
scope or success of this watchdog role. Of course, newspapers big and small
have done investigative stuff from time to time, and occasionally a blockbuster
story about scandal, corruption and greed makes big headlines for a while.
Think about all the bad stuff and the
bad guys who never get a headline.
Newspapers have left an awful lot of
watchdog stuff get past them.
Now, the core of newspaper readers are
older folks who have lifelong reading habits. When they die, there’s no one to
replace them.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment