Do People Really Hate the Media? A Suprising New Study

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Now, to the United States, where the fate of democracy is at stake ahead of a crucial presidential election and the future, of course, of two major wars. This, as trust in news organization, continues to remain at record lows, or does it? Our next guests argue that there is far more faith in the media than we’re led to believe. Jennifer Benz and Mariana Meza Hernandez from NORC at the University of Chicago, a research and polling organization joined Michel Martin to discuss the recent “Washington Post” op-ed. Actually, people don’t hate the media as much as you think.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Jenny Benz, Mariana Meza Hernandez, thank you so much for joining us.

JENNIFER BENZ, VICE PRESIDENT OF PUBLICA AFFAIRS AND MEDIA RESEARCH, NORC: Thanks for having us.

MARIANA MEZA HERNANDEZ, PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND MEDIA RESEARCH, NORC: Thank you.

MARTIN: So, we called you because you’re both with the Public Affairs and Media Research Unit at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, and you decided to dig into your data from the last few years to better understand how Americans view and trust or don’t trust the media. What made you take a look at that?

BENZ: I mean, we’re coming at this from a place where we feel like independent journalism and a common space for Americans to be able to talk about and share facts are key ingredients for a well-functioning democracy. And we’ve certainly seen over the years lots of data from NORC and from other polling organizations showing a really steep decline in public trust in journalism. It’s part of a larger phenomenon of declining trust in a lot of public institutions. But we really felt like that kind of dire narrative doesn’t give a whole lot of room for us to figure out how to fix things. And so, what we really wanted to understand is what are these big picture numbers really mean? What does it mean to not trust the press? And so, we’ve been collecting data on news consumers and how they use the news, why, what they’re looking for, for a number of years now and we wanted to kind of bring all that to — data together and try and really understand the nuance of what these lower trust numbers mean and what nuggets we could get out of that to figure out what the solution should be.

MARTIN: Obviously, the sort of the predicate of this is that it matters beyond people who are just in the business itself. Could you just say more about why you think it matters?

BENZ: Yes. I mean, we certainly feel like this is a problem that goes beyond just kind of understanding or fixing the business model of journalism or, you know, sort of reinforcing our own beliefs about the industry. But this is really research that’s designed to try and help address this critical problem because we consider journalism, we consider independent reporting, research facts, data, all of these are key ingredients to a healthy and functioning democracy in this country. And so, we do start from that premise. And, you know, our goal is to dig into these data and conduct the research that we feel like will help people have some insights and help the industry figure out a way out of this trust crisis.

MARTIN: OK. So, here’s why — one of the reasons we called you, is your team outlined your findings in an op-ed for “The Washington Post” titled “Actually, people don’t hate the media as much as you think.” Tell me why you say that? Why you say that in this piece? Tell me what some of the findings are.

HERNANDEZ: Sure. I think this tied to what Jenny was mentioning of trying to go into the details to really understand what people feel about the media, but more importantly, their media or the type of media they personally consume, which might be different or can add some detail to what we’re discussing here. And specifically, when we ask about their feelings on local media, what we find is that liberals, moderates, and conservatives alike, a majority of all three groups have a — the majority say they have a high trust in local news or local press, which is probably something that you would not expect thinking about the divisions or the polarization narrative that we always listen about. Some of these groups tend to trust less the media versus some tend to trust the media more. But what we find is when you actually ask about local media, those differences are not as stark and you find some positives rather than negatives there.

MARTIN: Here’s one thing I do want to ask about is that different polling organizations have come up with different numbers. Gallup, for example, says that only 34 percent of Americans trust the news. But your group, NORC, found that something like 55 percent trust the news. And a different organization, Pew, found that it was like something like 61 percent. Can you can you help us understand why those numbers look so different?

BENZ: Yes. I think — I mean, you get slightly different responses from all of these polling organizations, depending on exactly how you ask the question and the types of response options that you give people. You know, one thing that is consistent across all of these organizations who have put in the time to be able to track these measures over the years is that no matter sort of what the exact estimate is, everybody is showing this decline over time. And I think the one thing that we tried to get at in digging into these data a little bit more and trying to unpack is, you know, what do people really mean when they say that they don’t have a great deal of confidence in the press, or that they only trust journalism a little bit, you know, depending on all of these different question wordings. And when you disentangle some things, you start to see that the levels of trust are maybe a little bit higher than you might expect. So, you know, for example, a lot of people consider the — you know, the biggest function of journalism to deliver accurate facts to the public. And when you ask people, you know, how much confidence they have in the press and in journalism to be able to report the facts accurately, 55 percent say that they’re pretty confident. So, sometimes these kind of big picture measures that are important and that we’re all looking at overtime can mask some of the nuance in the data.

MARTIN: What about what people — what is that people say they are concerned about? You know, you have concerns about conspiracy theories being sort of — you know, sort of pushed out into the public arena or you have people who are concerned about political bias. Did people have different concerns based on who they were or how they identified themselves?

HERNANDEZ: We did find some differences in the concerns. So, again, I think liberals were slightly more concerned about the potential polarization that the press can feel into versus say conservatives were more concerned with the issue of misinformation but can be also found. And those are the big concerns for those two groups. But I think also important here is highlighting what they had in common and what they were actually looking for in the press, and again, it relates to what Jenny was mentioning of having the facts, right, having a press that relies on giving people the facts and what’s real instead of versus, like, saying, highlighting more opinions or the journalist’s opinions, people actually look for the facts when they look at news. And of course, their concerns varied slightly, but I think, overall, again, there’s some common ground there across ideologies.

MARTIN: And what about across demographic or age group? Let’s put it that way. Across generations, let’s put it that way. Because it’s another one of those stereotypes that, you know, Millennials and Gen Zs don’t — you know, won’t — everything’s supposed to be free, information’s supposed to be free, don’t want to pay for anything. I mean, that’s one of those — or don’t care at all or get all their news from TikTok or whatever. And what did your data find there?

HERNANDEZ: Sure. So, I think there — in the past year, NORC released a report where we actually looked at the younger generations. We looked at Gen Z, Millennials, and younger adults, and we actually asked a ton of questions of their news consumption and their opinion towards the press. And one of the key facts that we found is what you were mentioning is that actually those younger generations do pay for it for news and media, either by directly paying or donating to those sources, which may be more varied that we actually think when we think about traditional media. But there’s still a sign of a lot of engagement when it comes to news with those younger audiences as that also points out the relevance of the press and media for them and how they still rely on them to get the news.

MARTIN: So, Jenny, this is what I wanted to ask you. Why do you think we have such a negative picture of our — of the way we think our fellow Americans engage with the media? Why do you think it is we have such a negative picture, which you feel to be at odds with a lot of the research that you’ve uncovered?

BENZ: You know, the industry certainly has its challenges and we’re not, you know, in any way trying to downplay those, but we feel like the solutions can come out of some of these points that Mariana was mentioning where we can find common ground. And I think one potential challenge is that we’ve — where we see this disconnect is that we’ve done some studies where we’ve actually interviewed journalists and we’ve interviewed the public to try and understand what they do and don’t get about each other. And in some ways, you know, there is a little bit of a failure to communicate with our news consumers. And so, you know, one potential solution coming out of this work is thinking about the ways that we explain what we’re doing in our journalism and, you know, these data showed that there are some fundamental misunderstandings about each other. You know, we have roughly half the public that, you know, told us that they weren’t even really sure you know, what an op-ed was or what distinguishes an editorial from a regular news article. And one of their concerns about the media is that there’s too much opinion and not enough fact, when they feel like they are reading the news. And so, you can start to see some potential pathways where if we’re explaining what we’re doing and what the purpose of a news piece might be to the public in the way that they can understand it, we can try and bridge some of those communication gaps.

MARTIN: One of the things that you write in the editorial that we just mentioned, you write that “an exaggerated narrative of media disaster is becoming a problem in itself.” Why do you say that?

BENZ: Yes. I think, you know, this focus on this incredibly low trust number in these — some of these big picture public opinion measures is it’s the kind of thing that, you know, politicians can pick up and really point to say that, you know, don’t trust them, you know, we have this independent press in this country, but when large — you know, when the narrative is that these large numbers of the public don’t trust them, it makes it easy to kind of weaponize that lack of confidence in the independent free press in this country and the ability for them to do their jobs.

MARTIN: You know, even though there is a lot of positive data in the research that you kind of did and reviewed, you stopped short of saying that the so-called crisis of trust in the news is an illusion. So, it suggests that there is a bit of a crisis. So, can you just say more about that?

BENZ: Yes. I mean, we definitely are not trying to put-on rose-colored glasses here and say that there aren’t any problems. I mean, we do think that there is a crisis of trust in journalism. There’s data. That there’s a crisis and institutional trust kind of writ large in the country right now. And, you know, we see a lot of concerning things in the data. You know, we’ve seen some people’s concerns about — you know, deep concerns about misinformation and, you know, blaming journalists as much — or about as much as they do social media and politicians as a source of that misinformation. We see concerns about bias and ownership of the of the press. So, there are real concerns in the public. But there are also areas of, you know, hope and there are areas of some promise. And what we were trying to do is figure out what those spots of hope are and figure out how the industry can capitalize on those and try and get us out of the crisis.

MARTIN: Your organization’s general social survey, which measures trust in institutions found that the news media and Congress share the lowest levels of confidence of any institutions in the country. Below 10 percent report a great deal of confidence in either, but it just seems funny to me that Congress and the news media are sort of so equally ranked there. And I just wondered if you had some thoughts about that, why that might be.

HERNANDEZ: Yes. So, the General Social Survey is a great resource to understand the trends and the confidence and institutional — not only the press and Congress, but they also have been asking this question about a bunch of institutions nationally. And what we see is this decline of — in trust overall, right? This decline in trust is not exclusive or — to the press or to the media, but it’s also something that’s playing other institutions across the nation. So, I think it’s more of another call to action to really understand what’s going on beneath the surface or beneath the top line numbers and see where we can start to rebuild this trust collectively.

MARTIN: What are some of the things that you feel that perhaps the people in the legacy media, in particular, or the people who care about this could do to kind of bridge this divide? Can you just — can you say more about that?

BENZ: Yes. I mean, I think to the extent that we can open up the black box and sort of help people understand what, you know, the media is for folks. I mean, we see a lot of people are really concerned that, you know, the people that own media organizations have a lot of influence on the type of reporting that gets done. And this kind of general lack of understanding of what’s happening behind the scenes with journalism. So, I think transparency is also really key to helping people understand, you know, what it is that journalists do, why they’re doing it and what it is, in the stories, that people should be taking away as they read and consume the news.

MARTIN: Jenny Benz, Mariana Meza Hernandez, thank you so much for talking with us.

BENZ: Thanks for having us.

HERNANDEZ: Thank you.