Journalists: the dregs of society

It's not a great time to be writing in a “reporter's notebook” – along with politicians and lawyers, journalists are now among those most distrusted by the American public. A survey last spring showed that Americans distrust the media even more than they do the government – 67 percent of respondents polled by BBC and Reuters said they trusted their government and 59 percent said they trusted the media. In a country that gets as much enjoyment out of complaining about government as ours, you know your pretty low when your profession is disliked even more.
It's an interesting paradox. In an era in which media content is ubiquitous – 24-hour cable news, the blogosphere, the proliferation of niche publications, news headlines flashing on cell phones –Americans don't seem to like the people who produce what they are so eager to consume. But at least reporters of my scribbling breed can be relieved by the fact that newspapers are slightly more trusted than the television media – the least trusted of all.
People who respond to such surveys also probably don’t have in mind a humble local weekly like the Leader when they answer. It's harder to distrust somebody who's writing about your community – about the people that you know and see on the streets every day. But still, I can sometimes sense a great deal of paranoia in members of the public as I'm doing my job as a reporter. Some of it might simply be a healthy skepticism, but there is sometimes outright hostility too, like when a Scarborough Town Councilor berated me for writing what he said was "an extremely biased" article (he said our competitors were even worse). The assumption of many people seems to be that journalists must always be driven by some self-interested agenda, that they are incapable or unwilling to attempt an objective kind of reporting. People tend to think that journalists are either pawns in some left or right wing conspiracy that are intent on distorting the news to their liking or are corporate zombies who are controlled by the commercial interests that pay their salaries.
Of course, given the state of the most popular elements of the mainstream media, it would seem those paranoid people have a point. TV news, particularly, is increasingly polarized and dominated by ideological polemics in which every person must choose a side – even the journalist. And most media being produced today is increasingly spliced with commercial interests that erode what should be a focus on providing a crucial public service.
But despite all that, there are still many, many journalists out there who, in my opinion, are some of the most heroic, altruistic people alive today. In Iraq, 137 journalists have been killed since the war began, which makes it the most lethal war for journalists since WWII. Most of these journalists, I'm sure, are motivated by a sincere desire to tell the important stories that need to be told during this war; to keep Americans well informed and to keep those in power in check; to provide the perspectives not only of those running the war, but also of those fighting it and those that are victim to it. And they are selflessly putting their lives at an amazingly high risk in order to do this.
What do they get in return? They get called cowards and traitors by the people currently running our country. They get told that they are aiding the terrorists and distorting the "real" version of reality.
Another interesting, and disturbing, fact is that surveys show that a majority of Americans believe that journalists should be up front with their own opinions on the matters on which they are reporting. In other words, Americans have so little faith in the notion of objective journalism that they would rather journalists just give up on it and produce openly biased reporting. And that does seem to be the trend in the mainstream media. The popularity of opinion-oriented media is surging in all mediums.
But the value of good journalism, and the challenge of producing it, lies in simple old-fashioned hard work. So much of media today is about flashy graphics, slick personalities, sensational sound bytes and polarized but superficial opinions. The best journalism, though, comes out of reporters doing their true job – reporting. That's one of the things that I like most about working at a small weekly paper like the Leader – it's all about the simple and unglamorous task of getting the relevant information and stories out to the public in the most direct way possible. Even when it means sitting through a seemingly never-ending Planning Board meeting, sorting through the complexities of a municipal budget or covering an event that I would typically not be drawn to, it's motivation enough to be serving a community, learning a lot and getting a paycheck for doing it. I like to think that most reporters for highly influential newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times are motivated in a similar way, only on a larger scale.
It's puzzling to me, though, why Americans continue to support the elements of the media that are least worthy of trust and then say they can't trust the media. There are plenty of trustworthy, insightful and dedicated journalists out there, but they are usually the ones that don't draw much attention – that are less about looking good in front of the cameras than getting a complex story right. In ten minutes of “Maine Things Considered” on Maine Public Radio, there is about ten times as much substance as there is during ten minutes of the local television news, but for some reason, people just like to see those pretty faces and moving pictures. I guess they'd rather have that than someone they can trust.