Last Updated: March 02, 1999
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Why newspaper credibility has been dropping
Members of the public that have had actual experience
with the news process are the most critical of media credibility.
Newspaper editors need to acknowledge the importance of the way the
public’s experiences with the news process influence their perceptions.
During one of the focus groups, for instance, a man shared his experience
with the press.
He picked up the newspaper one morning and saw himself quoted in a story
for which he had never been interviewed. When he called the reporter to
ask how this had happened, the reporter said he didn’t have time to call,
so he guessed what the man might say. He said the reporter made it up!
Let’s acknowledge, of course, that we don’t know whether his story is
entirely true or not. But before this mortal sin of journalism is cavalierly
dismissed as an isolated incident or an exaggeration, it’s important to
remember that it doesn’t really matter: The impact of such word-of-mouth
reports on public perceptions of the media is still powerful.
It doesn’t matter what really happened, but what people believed happened.
Because that gentleman had firsthand knowledge of the press, he instantly
became the resident expert on media credibility for the entire focus group.
Nobody sitting in that room will likely ever forget his story. It’s also
reasonable to expect that he would enjoy that expertise with anyone else
to whom he related his up-close-and-personal encounter — and because anyone
with personal experience tends to have high source credibility, he would
most likely be believed.
Word-of-mouth is a powerful persuader, and these are the kinds of anecdotes
that can, unfortunately, live on for years. Further, human nature being
what it is, most of the stories about encounters with the news media will
be told by people who got burned.
Almost half of all adults in the U.S. report at some time having had
firsthand knowledge of a news story they saw covered in the newspaper.
Of that group, only 51 percent said they thought the facts in the story
were reported accurately, with others finding errors ranging from misinterpretations
(the primary problem) to factual mistakes.
Even closer to the news-gathering process are the 31 percent of adults
who said they’ve been the subject of a news story, or had been interviewed
by a newspaper reporter. Of that group:
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90 percent then read the story in the paper (not surprisingly).
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24 percent said they weren’t quoted correctly.
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31 percent found errors in the story (primarily misinterpretations).
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7 percent felt they suffered pain or embarrassment because of the errors.
This is a big group of media credibility “experts” out there, and many
of them don’t have a positive story to tell.
As is true of any eyewitness, people who have had direct experience
with journalists are not only perceived by others to be trustworthy sources
regarding the news-gathering process, but those experienced individuals
are also more vigilant and sensitized to judging the quality of news reports
they see ever afterward. Adults with experience are not only more likely
to find misleading headlines, mistakes in spelling and grammar, and factual
errors in the paper more than once a week, but they’re also more critical
of journalists and the media. The closer someone gets to the process, the
more likely they are to feel the press chases and overdramatizes sensational
stories, and the more likely they are to be skeptics about the accuracy
of news reports (in particular) and journalists (in general).
More telling is the direct relationship between personal experience
and strong beliefs. Adults that have been close to the news process are
more likely to believe that people in the news media are biased, public
dissatisfaction with the media is justified, and some types of people or
organizations get overly favorable treatment in the media, while others
don’t get a fair shake.
Finally, experience with the news process appears to color overall perceptions
of newspapers as well. Those who have been subjects of news stories (or
been interviewed) are more likely than the uninitiated to believe that
newspapers make biased decisions about what to publish, are unfair in reporting
on groups they disagree with, and don’t respect their readers’ intelligence.
In short, the people with the highest source credibility among their
peers are newspapers’ most severe critics — while those who have never
been interviewed, never been written about, and never been witness to a
news event they later read about are more forgiving.
Even worse, those who’ve been close to the news process appear to be
skillful at convincing others that newspapers can’t get it right, and people
talk about the news a lot.
Of all adults, 80 percent say they discuss news stories with friends,
family or co-workers at least a few times a week (more than half every
day), and in those conversations, the majority are discussing the credibility
of what they read or saw in the news at least some of the time. The news,
it seems, is news — and the public has a visceral interest in the topic.
When the facilitator for one of the focus groups began the session by
saying the participants would be discussing quality and credibility in
the media, the entire room erupted in laughter. In 15 of 16 focus groups
held across the country, the participants included people who had been
interviewed or had firsthand knowledge of a newspaper story, and most cited
inaccuracies from the sloppy (like getting addresses or names wrong) to
the outrageous (like the reporter who supposedly made up quotes). We heard:
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The complaint of a man who became a news subject after he shot an alligator.
“They made me out to be a mad killer. The gator ate my dog, that’s why
I shot it.”
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From another man who talked about the pain he felt when his local newspaper
got the circumstances of his stepson’s death all wrong. The story made
his stepson out to be a drug addict — which was not true.
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From a woman who talked about actually having heard a speech by Louis Farrakhan
and not recognizing it in the account in the next day’s paper. She judged
the story misleading.
From these and other anecdotes, it’s clear that many of these individuals
have repeated the story of their encounter with journalism often enough
to have perfected the timing, the parsing, and the emotive impact of the
tale. They make very convincing witnesses.
Of course, some journalists will argue that sources always complain
after-the-fact, just as others will believe that “small” typos shouldn’t
affect a reader’s ability to appreciate the excellence and insight in their
story. They might both be right — but the numbers are too big and the public’s
perceptions too prevalent to write off, or to retain comforting extenuations
in the face of a small army of citizens who might be willing to testify
differently.
