A Matter of Trust

In survey after survey, the public says they want news they can trust. Seems like a reasonable request — a fairly black-and-white one, to boot — but here’s the thing: How do you measure trust?

Just like that, we find ourselves knee-deep in the muck of gray area.

The news media has long employed an arsenal of tactics, the intended purpose of which was to build trust. Still, today’s complicated media landscape blows those tactics out of the water.

Among the tactics? Keeping reporters and anchors in the same roles for the length of their careers. That way, the public recognized the faces, voices, and bylines of the people bringing them the news. Familiarity breeds comfort, and comfort becomes trust. The concept worked especially well before the birth of cable. In the old, pre-cable landscape, the Big Three networks were the standard bearers of trust. Americans made an appointment to watch one of the three every weeknight. People tended to remain true to their chosen one, who was seated behind a desk at ABC, CBS, or NBC. Trust was part of the package. The only variable, really, was what would be served for dinner that evening.

Then came cable, with a 24-hour format that required more anchors than anyone could remember. And then came the internet, where everyone is an anchor with their own stories to tell (which may or may not be true). Trust has little to nothing to do with names, faces, and bylines in today’s always-on, always-changing media landscape. With that in mind, news media had to make some decisions. To be trusted, or to be part of the crowd?

In the short term, news outlets may have scored more clicks by sharing on social, but clicks don’t translate into any meaningful metric. And they most assuredly don’t translate into trust.

Driving people to social media and away from news platforms is a tactic now part of an era that taught news professionals many things. Most of those things are shining examples of what not to do.

It seems counterintuitive to move away from the idea of all platforms, all the time. Yet there was a time when people went to the source. Times have changed, but history and nature underscore leadership is always about moving away from the pack.

At the heart of the issue is that it’s often impossible to distinguish between what is vetted, credible news and what is just another posting on social media. In today’s landscape, it all looks and feels the same. That revelation is certainly one that will require more than a fair share of newsies to walk through a 12-step recovery process. They need to accept the notion that, in their attempts to save their brands they damaged their reputations. All that posting and sharing of news via social media platforms did nothing to build trust and did everything to make news brands invisible to the naked eye.

Mom always said to be careful who you hang out with. Now we know why.