Losing faith in newspapers

It is trust, not technology, that should be causing the newspaper industry greatest concern

It’s understandable that the question, “is my employer going to go bust?” features in many newspaper employees minds. It’s a concern based on the terminal decline of printed newspaper editions and the struggle to make digital alternatives generate profits, even when many overhead costs are diminishing with the dying print editions.

But to focus on the digital struggles that compel editors to ask such questions as: “Should we do more lists like Buzzfeed, more videos like YouTube and more graphs like Nate Silver?” is to miss a bigger problem. It is one of trust.

Why would you give money to someone for information when you don’t trust them?

Journalists – with all their ethical problems – regularly come out as one of the least trusted professions in the country. It’s even worse for newspaper journalists; their lowly average ratings are dragged up by broadcast journalists who are much more trusted than their print colleagues.

Ipsos MORI’s latest trust index, for example, shows just 22% of the British public trust journalists. Slightly better than the politicians they love to mock but way down on other professions such as civil servants (55%), the police (66%) or teachers (86%).

The situation is not quite as bad as it might be, for all the controversies of recent years over press ethics they have not pushed the trust ratings down to record lows. Resilience at the bottom is better than nothing, if only just.

There is also some solace to be gained from the poor ratings compared to other professions. Others have managed to recover from a short-term shock (such as bankers, back up to 31% from 21% in 2013) or even get themselves on a long-term rising trend, such as scientists and civil servants.

Yet although at the turn of the century there was a brief flurry of newspaper initiatives to improve their reliability and trust – such as importing readers’ editors and correction columns from the US – since then there has been little further progress.

At the same time, however, the rise of social media has made newspaper mistakes increasingly visible. Pre-internet, newspaper readers tended to read one publication a week and possibly another brand on the weekend. With the exception of major media scandals that they might have picked up from broadcast they might rarely come across criticisms of a story run by their regular daily read. Now, however, criticisms run by other outlets and made directly by individuals or organisations may well pop up in their social media feeds, revealing flaws that would have gone unnoticed before. And each time readers see this it chips away at their faith in the newspaper.

If you are in the entertainment business, not being trusted need not matter. After all who believes every word from a stand-up comedian after they say, “You won’t believe what happened to me…”? You know you are about to be lied to, but it’s lying as entertainment. As long as the exaggerated, edited and reworked story makes you laugh, so what?

However, the entertainment path is a tricky one for newspapers to rely on in the future and packed with rivals, many with more experience and fewer overheads. For those seeking to stick with (at least some) news, the widespread availability of news online for free is certainly a challenge for newspapers trying to replace their print revenues.

But as long as they are so deeply mistrusted, the basic commercial proposition – no matter how cleverly wrapped in lists, cat videos and tweets – will remain: “You don’t trust us. Now give us some money”. Unless you’re in the Mafia, that’s not a winning long-term proposition.