The scream, by Terry Freedman
According to a recent survey, journalists are right at the bottom of the list when it comes to people trusting them on coronavirus. You can see a summary of the data here: Most Trusted Spokespeople. Now, we have to take into consideration the fact that the picture seems to be a bit more complicated than that. For example, a recent report by the Reuters Institute paints a rather different landscape.
Nevertheless, to the extent that people do distrust journalists, is it really surprising? I find most mainstream news programmes on television to be accusatory, and biased. For example, using words like “The Health Secretary admitted …” as opposed to “The Health Secretary said…” is providing someone’s views rather than news. This is not a political point, by the way. I’m all in favour of holding power to account, but using loaded words to do so, without giving the broader picture or asking intelligent questions, that is, questions intended to elicit information rather than provide us with the political views of the reporter/editor/news channel is not news reporting as I understand the term.
Or consider the predilection for “gotchas”, in which reporters try and trip the government spokespeople up, as reported (for example) by Guido Fawkes: News reporters emulating infotainers for ratings is backfiring.
Or consider the fact that (as far as I can tell) many of the journalists tasked with reporting on Covid19 are not health experts, and therefore not really qualified to investigate or report on the issues.. One example of this phenomenon is Robert Peston, who is an economics and political reporter, apparently making a mistake, as reported here: Peston’s testing shortage disinformation. Plus his discussion with the Deputy Chief Medical Officer:
An Australian news channel has hit upon an astonishingly original idea: a podcast about coronavirus featuring a health reporter, a doctor, and guest experts. It’s informative, honest as far as reliability of the research cited is concerned, entertaining, short and comes out every week day. A podcast about coronavirus featuring people who have some idea of what they’re talking about: fancy that!. Here’s the link: Coronacast.