Media Credibility

Whether or not one blames President Trump for changes in how we look for and decide to trust various media outlets (I, personally, think he's merely the latest step in an ongoing shift), this article about how teens are looking at media is fascinating.

... Frankly, I think calling it terrifying is just as valid.

However, it's not necessarily because I think their mistrust in the various traditional media outlets is misplaced. I do, in fact, think that a lot of the mistrust of traditional media outlets is misplaced, but I can at least understand where it comes from. And even I think a little bit of questioning where they get their information, which details they choose to emphasize, and what they do and don't report on is a useful habit to have, so long as it isn't taken to excess.

The problem, for me, is what we choose to replace those traditional sources with. The end of the article mentions that many of these people trust individual journalists and news-related social media more than traditional media. I can, to a point, understand that it's easier to trust an individual person than it is to trust an entire editorial board; it can be much easier to understand how and why one person makes decisions, as opposed to having to figure out the intersecting motives of and influences on entire groups. However, that one person also generally has fewer resources available to control their own biases or check their own errors than a group will have. For that matter, the limits one person faces may introduce biases that can't be corrected for on their own - in particular, one perspective on a given situation isn't always complete enough to be helpful.

Trying to correct that problem by gathering a group of people together to run a social media page may create something that avoids the typical biases of a media group and has the reach and influence that individual bloggers or reporters don't. However, it adds biases of its own, since such groups usually rely on the positive regard of their audience in order to continue to exist and to keep their influence. What those groups of people wan't isn't always driven by a rational regard for the truth, so a group acting in service to their wishes can quickly and dramatically depart from useful and trustworthy reporting. And while the lack of any advertisers or subscribers is sometimes a benefit, in freeing such pages from top-down control, it also prevents any control from being exercised over a group that is not acting in good faith.

Which, I suppose, isn't a reason to regard traditional media or individual reporters as inherently better than social media pages or individual bloggers. But I would really like to see people actually apply the same critical eye that is currently being turned on traditional media to the latter category as well. I don't think most people do, to be blunt.