I read an interesting piece from AllSides this morning. One reason I like AllSides is right there in the name: they make a genuine effort to show us how the same story is being covered from the left, center, and right.
So the story is that, for the first time in almost a decade, Americans’ trust in the news media has gone up.
That’s encouraging — sort of.
Because only 33% of Americans say they trust the news media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. That’s up from 28% last year, but one-third of the country trusting journalism isn’t exactly a victory lap.
What I found particularly interesting is who changed.
• Republican trust jumped from 8% to 22%.
• Independents moved to 31%.
• Democratic trust actually dropped slightly, to 50%.
And that makes me wonder whether our problem is sometimes less about trusting the news and more about trusting news that confirms what we already believe.
That’s dangerous no matter which political jersey we’re wearing.
Good journalism isn’t supposed to make me comfortable. It isn’t supposed to confirm my worldview every morning over coffee. Sometimes good reporting should make me say, “Well, I didn’t know that.” Sometimes it should make me reconsider something I was certain about. Sometimes it should make the people I agree with look bad and the people I disagree with look better than I expected.
That’s why I intentionally try to read beyond a single source and beyond sources that consistently reinforce what I already think.
Truth isn’t partisan! Just as the gospel isn’t partisan!!
And perhaps rebuilding trust in journalism requires something from journalists, but it definitely requires something from us: curiosity, humility, media literacy, and the willingness to discover that occasionally we might be wrong.
A free press doesn’t work very well if we only want it free to tell us what we already believe.
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