By Frank F Islam & Ed Crego, July 8th, 2025 (Image credits: Tom de Boor, JNCGPT40)

This is the second part of a two-part series on trust-busting and the news media. In part one, we examined the nature of the trust-busting from a variety of perspectives. In this blog, we examine the causes of the trust-busting and what to do to address them.

Many critics of the traditional news media would cite it as the sole source of the trust-busting. That is definitely not the case.

The Trust-Busting Factors

As we pointed out near the end of our first blog, there are a number factors contributing to trust-busting and the news media.

They include: the perspective of the traditional news media; the emergence of alternative news media; the growth of social media, misinformation, and disinformation; the mindsets of the news consumers, the impact of news influencers, and the impact of the MAGA media disruptor.

Volumes have and will be written on each of these factors. Following are our top-line thoughts on them.

The Traditional News Media

To our knowledge, no one has done a definitive study on the role the traditional media itself (newspapers, TV, and journalists) have played in trust-busting. In the first quarter of 2022, however, the Pew Research Center (Pew) did an extensive survey of nearly 12,000 journalists, and close to 10,000 members of the public (U.S. adults), that provides excellent data on this aspect of trust-busting which we featured in an earlier blog.

In its survey, Pew asked the journalists to describe their industry in a single word. The most common responses were words related to “struggling” and “chaos.” Other less common words provided by the journalists were “partisan” and “biased.”

Surprisingly, 29% of the general public surveyed said they had a “great deal or fair amount of trust” in the information received from news organizations, compared to only 14% of journalists who said they thought the public had a great deal or fair amount of trust in that information.

Unsurprisingly, the journalists had a much more positive assessment than the general public of the work that news organizations are doing in performing their five core functions, which are:

• Covering the most important stories of the day
• Reporting the news accurately
• Serving as a watchdog over elected leaders
• Giving voice to the underrepresented
• Managing or correcting misinformation

The percentage of journalists who gave “very/somewhat good” positive assessment responses regarding their industry’s performance of these core functions ranged from a high of 67% for “covering the most important stories” to a low of 43% for “managing or correcting misinformation.”

Those two functions also received the highest and lowest scores from responding U.S. adults, with 43% crediting journalists for “covering the most important stories’ and 25% for “managing or correcting information.”

These differences in perspective help to explain the impact that the traditional news industry itself — primarily at the national opposed to local levels — has had on trust-busting.

The Emergence of Alternative News Sources

We devoted a chapter to the media in our book, Renewing the American Dream, published in 2010. Early in that chapter with regard to newspapers, we stated:

The headline has become the deadline. Some say goodbye and good riddance — that’s yesterday’s news. The future belongs to the electronic media and bloggers.

With regard to television, we stated:

The electronic media used to be dominated by the broadcast news: CBS, NBC, and ABC were kings of the hill. Now they’re at the bottom of it. They have been replaced at the top by cable news and a new brand of reporting.

Frankly, we feel that “reporting” is a strong term to use, because much of what is done is carping and criticizing those with ideas or ideals different from the commentators.’

Fifteen years later, the big three of broadcast news are mere shadows of themselves, and have been supplanted by the big three of cable news: Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN.

There are many reasons for this shift. A major one, though, is that national broadcast news had no specific target audience.

It was intended to reach everyone with a compressed agenda in a short period of time — half an hour or so, including advertisements. By contrast, Fox, MSNBC, and CNN have target audiences.

CNN was founded in 1980 by media entrepreneur Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as the first twenty-four hour news channel. It is now owned by Warner Bros. Its target audience is people who are very interested in the news — news junkies, if you will. Fox was launched in 1996 by media mogul Rupert Murdoch to reach a conservative audience.

MSNBC was launched in 1996 as a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC in order to compete in the cable space. Microsoft departed the joint venture in the cable channel in 2005. And in the 21st century, the target audience for MSNBC has become liberals and Democrats.

In the first quarter of 2025, Adweek reports that Fox News averaged 3.012 million primetime viewers, MSNBC averaged 1.024 million, and CNN averaged 558,000. In this decade, Fox News has tended to have the highest average viewership, with MSNBC being second, and CNN being third, with a shrinking viewership percentage.

In addition to the “big three,” Newsmax has become a player in the cable channel space over the past several years. Newsmax’s primary audience leans conservative and far-right.

The Social Media Morass

In 2020 we wrote, “If there ever was a misnomer, social media is it.” And, went on to state, “…A segment of what transpires in the electronic space could more appropriately be labeled the unsocial media. The unsocial media became a means for saying vicious, venomous or vile things, and for propagating and popularizing falsehoods and fake news.”

Sadly, in 2025, our assessment of social media has been proven accurate by its two most prominent users, Elon Musk, who owns X (formerly Twitter), and Donald Trump, who owns Truth Social.

Both have used their platforms to spew out their versions of truth and reality. In June, they turned their social media arsenals on each other.

Musk began the exchange by messaging on X that Trump’s “big beautiful bill” was a “disgusting abomination.” He escalated later by going directly after the President, posting ‘Time to drop the really big bomb: @realdonaldtrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been released. Have a nice day DJT.”

In response, Trump on Truth Social proclaimed, “Elon was ‘wearing thin.’ I asked him to leave. I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!) and he just went CRAZY!”

Then, on June 10, Musk walked back his comments, expressing regret over some of his posts about President Trump in a post, stating they “Went to far.” That concluded their social media battle.

Unfortunately, Trump and Musk are not alone in their use of the “unsocial media” for abuse, attacks, and propagation of mis- and disinformation. As we have written in the past, in the United States today, social media has become a primary vehicle for disseminating disinformation and diminishing America’s social capital, which is the glue which helps hold us together as citizens in this democratic republic.

In the name of free speech, and to the benefit of its billionaire owners, social media remains unregulated in the United States. As a result, it is a tool which can be — and is — sometimes wielded without constraints to injure others and to inflict harm on our institutions.

Consumers’ Mindsets

Social media is also frequently used to mine the mind-field by reaching out to consumers with customized news that conforms with their personal perspectives.

As citizens, we are definitely not of one mind but most of us have our minds set. As we wrote in our book, Working the Pivot Points: To Make America Work Again:

What we have in common as citizens, however, is the fact that we all share certain common characteristics. These include hardened beliefs, personal style preferences, selective reception of data, decision-making and thinking flaws, and a tendency toward irrationality.

“Hardened beliefs” and “selective reception of data” have a considerable impact on how we get news and what each of us views as reliable news.

Hardened beliefs are a person’s core values, attitudes, and beliefs. They are usually developed early in life, and relate to areas such as religion, race relations, and issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

Selective reception of data means we only seek out data that aligns with our viewpoints. And if we do get data that does not align with our perspective, we reject it completely. In fact, studies have shown that some people, when given accurate information and then provided incorrect information that was closer to their viewpoint, they believed the incorrect information — even after they were told it was not true.

What all of this means is that we seek out and look at the news through our personal filters. Those filters can be political, religious, racial, demographic, etc. and some combination thereof.

That’s why, as we have written in the past, in commenting on the minds of Trump supporters, “Frequently, citizens’ votes have more to do with who they are rather than who the candidates are or what their ads say. That’s why when it comes to winning elections in close races, understanding psychographics trumps demographics.”

Various researchers and analysts discovered about what was on and in the minds of early Trump supporters at that time. They were MAGA voters who:

• Were “true authoritarians” that scored high on authority/loyalty/ sanctity.
• Felt that discrimination against whites had become as big a problem as discrimination against Blacks and other minorities.
• Scored highest on racial resentment, and were much more likely to support Trump than their more moderate counterparts.
• Didn’t feel they had a voice. And wanted to wage an interior war against those who are different than them (e.g. immigrants and Muslims).

The Noise of News Influencers

As we noted in a blog posted in 2023, “… what a large segment of the American public is turning to today as their source for the news is Not Necessarily The News.”

That statement was based upon the findings of a Gallup and Knight Foundation national survey conducted in 2022, which found that:

The American public’s trust in institutions continues to erode — particularly confidence in organizations that provide news and information…. that many Americans turn to individuals with public platforms for information and place a great deal of trust in these individuals.

To put it another way, the noise from news influencers triumphs over and drowns out the traditional news media.

A Pew Center Research (Pew) study conducted in November of 2024, after the presidential election, documented the nature and impact of news influencers. Pew staff summarized the key findings from the study as follows:

• About one-in-five Americans — including a much higher share of adults under 30 (37%) — say they regularly get news from influencers on social media.
• News influencers are most likely to be found on the social media site X, where 85% have a presence. But many also are on other social media sites, such as Instagram (where 50% have an account) and YouTube (44%).
• Slightly more news influencers explicitly identify as Republican, conservative or pro-Donald Trump (27% of news influencers) than Democratic, liberal or pro-Kamala Harris (21%).
• A clear majority of news influencers are men (63%).
• Most (77%) have no affiliation or background with a news organization.

The Pew survey also found that:

• About two-thirds of news influencers in the study are on more than one site, including 27% who are on five or more sites.
• Many influencers also share content through podcasts (34%) or newsletters (22%).

News influencers have become increasingly influential, as Richard Edelman of Edelman Communications observed in a posting after the Pew study was released, “because of the dramatic fragmentation and decline in trust of traditional media and the collapse of viewership on cable TV. MSNBC and CNN are now at 25-year lows in viewership.”

The MAGA Media Disruptor

When asked to name a news influencer, only 2% of the Pew survey participants named Donald Trump. We implicitly trust the accuracy of Pew’s reporting of its survey findings.

We must say, however, that in our opinion, this low percentage significantly understates the negative effect that Trump has had on the traditional media, and the substantial impact he has had on elevating his version of the news — and those who advocate and advance news he prefers be seen as authentic and truthful.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has taken the news into his own hands. A Washington Post analysis found that as of Sunday, June 1:

Trump had posted 2,262 times to his company’s social network Truth Social in the 132 days since his inauguration, — more than three times the number of tweets he sent during the same period of his first presidency…

Trump has also barred the AP from being part of the White House press pool, and invited in reporters from “… the conspiracy-minded Gateway Pundit, Steve Bannon’s podcast, and Lindell TV.”

In 2025, having returned to the Oval Office as President, Donald Trump has become an even bigger and bolder news trust-buster than he was while in office the first time — or during his time out of office as the proponent of the Big Lie.

That’s not to say Trump didn’t do a fairly good job in going after the news, and propagating his version of the truth, as the 45th president. Here’s what we wrote about his pseudo-achievements during his first term:

• News Media and the Free Press: Early in the Trump administration, Kellyanne Conway appeared on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd. She defended the White House’s false claim that Trump’s inauguration was watched by the largest audience ever by telling Todd, “…we feel compelled to go out and clear the air and put alternative facts out there.” Initially, there was uncertainty as to what alternative facts were. That was clarified quickly as the President called traditional news and honest reporting fake news and issued his own alternative news as the real deal. As a result, the President’s fake news on social media and coverage on Fox News, Trump’s favorite public relations agency, became the sole sources of “real news” for his supporters.
• Truth: It has been said that truth is in the eye of the beholder. The Washington Post Fact Checker team reports that over the course of his presidency Donald Trump made more than 30,500 “false or misleading claims.” The Trump supporters beholding those claims saw and heard all — or the vast majority of them — as the truth.

The Trump version of truth-telling continues to this day. After the U.S. bombing of nuclear facilities in Iran, Trump proclaimed that they had been “completely and totally obliterated.” This assertion was made without any evidence to support that claim, and as experts start to weigh in, it appears that was not an accurate assessment. That will not matter to his ardent constituents who take his word as the truth.

Countering the Trust-Busting

In conclusion, trust-busting and the news media is a multi-dimensional problem that will require a multi-faceted response. We proposed such a response in the final blog in a three-part series titled: The News In America Is In Trouble, which we posted in 2022.

The components of that response were:

• Rebuild trust in the traditional news media
• Declare war on disinformation and social media abuse
• Cultivate the news consumer

We outline strategies for each of those components in that blog. Those strategies remain relevant in 2025, but are not repeated here.

The reason for that is while the traditional news media is part of the trust problem, it is not the primary or root cause. As the analysis in this blog indicates, that cause is who we are, what we read, who we listen to, and what we define as news.

The Pew Research Center did a study in conjunction with Knight Ridder (Pew-Knight Initiative) that confirms that we are living in a time in which news is not defined by journalists and what they write, but by the consumers of the news. Some of the key findings Pew reports from that study include the following:

• Defining news has become a personal, and personalized, experience. People decide what news means to them, and which sources they turn to, based on a variety of factors, including their own identities and interests.
• At the same time, views of news as not being “biased” or “opinionated” can conflict with people’s actual behaviors and preferences. For instance, 55% of Americans believe it’s at least somewhat important that their news sources share their political views.
• People’s emotions about news are at times tied to broader feelings of media distrust, or specific events going on at that time — perhaps in combination with individuals’ political identities. For instance, partisans often react positively to news about their own political parties or candidates, and negatively to news covering their opposition, which means feelings can shift with political changes.

These findings show that for many citizens, affective polarization and identity politics — people’s feelings and attitudes toward those in their party or group (race, religion, ethnicity, etc.) versus those who are not — determine not only what constitutes the news but what is believable or not in the news.

Because of this condition, 21st century citizens must be central to confronting and combating the trust-busting in the news today. 21st century citizens are: Interested, Issues-oriented, Informed, Independent, and Involved.

21st century citizens will do their homework, and then work with others of varying political and personal persuasions, to build communication coalitions to ensure that truthful news is promoted and prevails over fake news with as many citizens as possible.

21st century citizens will understand that, for a variety of reasons, there will many people who will not be persuadable and will not be convertible. A key factor (and challenge) will be where people fall on what we call the affective polarization/identity politics continuum.

Those on the extreme right and the extreme left of that continuum will be intractable. They will not change their opinion or position based on the truth or facts, nor in order to convene with those outside of their in-groups to determine what constitutes the news.

In spite of this, 21st century citizens will not be deterred. They will not be news-makers, but they will be fake news-breakers. They will understand that we are living in dangerous times in terms of what is labeled as the news, and be advocates for and proponents of speaking truth to power.

21st century citizens will understand, as Adlai Stevenson said, that “Those who corrupt the public mind are as evil as those who steal from the public purse.” They will hear Stevenson’s good counsel: “As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.” And as 21st century citizens, they will come together to support the trust-builders and to repudiate the trust-busters.