A September 2009 article in the New York Times titled, Trust in News Media Declines to New Low in Pew Survey, discusses the increasing lack of confidence in the news.
Results from a survey conducted by the Pew Research Company showed that since 2007 there has been an increase in negative perceptions about the news. Opinions regarding specific news organization such as FOX, CNN, and MSNBC differed depending on political affiliation, however Democrats and Republicans alike felt the news was inaccurate and biased.
Politics aside, there is some validity to these concerns. News is a socially constructed process that involves a lot more than just telling the truth. Media scholars Croteau and Hoynes (authors of Media Society) discuss the journalistic process and its unrecognized complexity.
Starting from scratch every day just isn't feasible for a newspaper. For this reason the general cookie-cutter outline for news coverage exists, with topics like sports, business, and international news highlighted regularly. The problem with this is that by default there are things that simply don't make the cut, and when we don't hear about those things, they don't have significance. It's as if those reject-topics aren't important, or even worse - don't exist. Past the initial inclusion or exclusion of a story comes further editing. News items will be reworded, or simply erased for a number of reasons such as:
1. to avoid controversy
2. to keep advertisers happy
3. to please the editor
Although there are many more aspects to the journalistic process, the long and short of it is that news is a business, and the bottom-line is a highly influential factor in its production. So the next time you read a newspaper or watch the news take a minute to think who the story is coming from and why. You may find that the truth has nothing to do with it.
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