Why Doesn't Anyone Trust The Media?

Nov 21, 2024

Ben Smith, co-founder of Semafor and former media columnist for The New York Times, teams up with Nayeema Raza, co-host of Mixed Signals and executive producer at The New York Times Opinion. They dive into the alarming crisis of trust in journalism. Topics include the clash between traditional media and newer platforms like podcasts, the influence of political figures on media perceptions, and the urgent need for transparency in journalism. They explore how tech advancements shape public views and discuss strategies to reclaim audience trust.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Media Distrust

The media, like other American institutions, faces historically low trust levels.
This distrust is driven by technological shifts, changing consumption habits, and perceived bias.

INSIGHT

Shifting Power Dynamics

The most powerful individuals in media are now effectively disrupting it.
In the past, social media empowered the powerless, but now figures like Elon Musk use these tools to push back.

INSIGHT

The Historical Role of Money in Media

Historically, media has been linked to power and money, even before the internet era.
The current nostalgia for a more trusted past ignores this historical reality.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

In the wake of the election results, many Democrats are doing some serious soul-searching (and a fair amount of blame-gaming) to understand why they lost. But it’s not just Democrats reckoning with their loss of trust from the American people. New polling from places like Gallup shows historically high levels of distrust in journalists. Meaning that a profession built on the delivery of trusted information is now in the midst of a full on crisis of mistrust.

How did we get here? What are we doing wrong? And what, if anything, can we—or should we—do to regain that trust?

For today’s episode, we take a frank look at the media’s role in this crisis with Ben Smith and Nayeema Raza.

Ben Smith is the co-founder of Semafor, a news organization with ambitious goals to redefine global journalism. He’s the former media columnist for The New York Times and was the founding editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, leading it from a scrappy startup to a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom. Ben’s journalism roots trace back to the late 1990s and early 2000s, where he covered crime and New York politics for local papers. He was part of the early journalism blogging era online, reported on the 2008 Obama campaign for Politico, and embodies a no-nonsense ethos to journalism that I’ve come to admire over the years.

Nayeema Raza is (alongside Ben) the co-host on Semafor’s media podcast Mixed Signals, which explores how money, culture, and politics shape everything we read, watch, and hear. She has worked as executive producer at The New York Times Opinion and frequently guest-hosts Open to Debate. With a background in film and documentary, Nayeema often draws fascinating parallels between newsroom trends and what’s happening in Hollywood and beyond.

As you’ll hear, the three of us don’t always agree. In this episode, I’m a bit more open with my views than usual—we even scrutinize some of my past work. Together, we wrestle with the causes and context of the current trust crisis in journalism, explore historical parallels, discuss the disruption of the internet and influence of social media, and unpack lessons from the Trump era so far.

Thank you to our sponsor Ground News. You can visit them here to learn more:

GROUND.NEWS

To support our work please consider becoming a paid subscriber.