We have a trust problem because we have a misinformation problem

First you define the problem.  Check.  

Then you explore possible solutions.  Ch . . . What?

From Media trust hits new low by Felix Salmon.  Fair enough.  The outcome of such polling is particularly sensitive to the choice of measure, polling mechanism, and wording.  Salmon reports only 46% of Americans trust the media.  On the other hand, Gallup finds only 9% of Americans trust the media a great deal.  Poll design, methodology, definitions and wording make a great difference.  

I accept the premise that, as a broad matter, trust in media is substantially less than it was a decade or two ago.  Why?  I don't there is yet a consensus though plenty of candidate explanations.

The media business models have been weakened and they produce less reliable content than in the past.

Increasing number and diversity of information sources decreases trust in legacy media.

Legacy media has become hyper-politicized because it is among the cheapest forms of news reporting (opinion writing over fact reporting.)

The most recent generation of young reporters are more ideologically and class divergent from the average American household than in the past.

Most reporting originates in major urban centers unrepresentative of the issues experienced by Americans in suburban, small town or rural America. 

The reality is likely to be all these in some proportion and other possible causal elements together.  Changes in complex systems are most commonly attributable to multiple causes.

Salmon's argument:

Trust in traditional media has declined to an all-time low, and many news professionals are determined to do something about it.

Why it matters: Faith in society's central institutions, especially in government and the media, is the glue that holds society together. That glue was visibly dissolving a decade ago, and has now, for many millions of Americans, disappeared entirely.

By the numbers: For the first time ever, fewer than half of all Americans have trust in traditional media, according to data from Edelman's annual trust barometer shared exclusively with Axios. Trust in social media has hit an all-time low of 27%.

56% of Americans agree with the statement that "Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations."

58% think that "most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public."

When Edelman re-polled Americans after the election, the figures had deteriorated even further, with 57% of Democrats trusting the media and only 18% of Republicans.

It is worth noting that his argument encompasses both government and media but his numbers are only for media.  Gallup has nearly fifty years of data quantifying the decline in trust in government across multiple dimensions.  The numbers for those with the highest level of trust are typically down 35-60% from their peaks in 1972 with a couple of striking exceptions such as Great Deal of Trust in the Executive Branch is up from 24% (in the Nixon resignation era) to 28% in 2020.  Trust in State and Local governments are up considerably from 1972.  

Some of the sharp drops are combined with the low absolute levels.  For example, in 1972 only 7% trusted politicians a great deal but that trust fell nearly 40% to 4% in 2020.  A Great Deal of Trust in the Federal Legislative branch of government declined from 13% in 1972 to 4% in 2020.  

Well worth clicking through and getting a more nuanced sense of historical trends.

The basic message though is that media and government have both seen smaller and smaller percentages of those with a great deal of trust over the past fifty years.

I would argue that Salmon starts out with a reasonable empirical argument (not all of it established in the article itself.)  But then there seems an odd transition in the article.

The big picture: These numbers are echoed across the rest of the world: They're mostly not a function of Donald Trump's war on "fake news".

As vaccine rumor hunter Heidi Larson puts it, "we don’t have a misinformation problem, we have a trust problem.”

News organizations have historically relied mainly on advertising income, and as those dollars flow increasingly to Google and Facebook, that has created institutional weakness that shows up in trust data.

Yes, there is a lot of evidence that this broadly a worldwide issue.  The change in business model between legacy media and social media is true but awkwardly framed.  And I like the dramatic wording of the argument that "we don’t have a misinformation problem, we have a trust problem” but it would be easy to make the case that the misinformation problem is the cause of the trust problem.

Salmon seems to be making the argument that you can solve the trust problem without solving the misinformation problem and I am pretty confident those tightly linked issues.

The odd transition morphs into a strikingly improbable argument.

Reversing the decline is a monster task — and one that some journalists and news organizations have taken upon themselves. They're going to need help — perhaps from America's CEOs.

The implication is that Americans trust CEOs to a greater degree than they do media and government.  Polling of Americans indicates this is not true.  Gallup indicates a decline in those with a great deal of trust in big business from 10% in 1973 to 7% in 2020.

In reality, across nearly fifty years of data, the percentage of Americans with a high degree of trust in media, in government, and in big business has always been small and has shown big declines across those decades.  

Salmon's recommendation on how to restore trust in government and media almost echoes fascism - get big business to work with government and media to restore trust.  An argument with a patently failed track record.  

How it works: Media outlets can continue to report reliable facts, but that won't turn the trend around on its own. What's needed is for trusted institutions to visibly embrace the news media.

CEOs (a/k/a the fourth branch of government) are at or near the top of Edelman's list of trusted institutions. 

 

By the numbers: 61% of Trump voters say that they trust their employer's CEO. That compares to just 28% who trust government leaders, and a mere 21% who trust journalists. 

 

The bottom line: CEOs have long put themselves forward as the people able to upgrade America's physical infrastructure. Now it's time for them to use the trust they've built up to help rebuild our civic infrastructure.

There is so much wrong here.  Contra - Salmon, Big Business is no more trusted by Americans than the Media or Government.   The Fourth Estate is usually used to refer to the Administrative State of autonomous agencies, not Big Business.  Since most CEOs do not lead companies involved in infrastructure building, it seems questionable that "have long put themselves forward as the people able to upgrade America's physical infrastructure."  There is no evidence that Trust can be transferred.  There is a whiff of the fixed pie delusion of most of those on the left.

It is an article of faith for most on the left that there is a fixed pie of (wealth, income, status, etc.) and society can be fixed by a centralized state reallocating the scarce resource among the population so that everyone can be deemed equal.

That is demonstrably nonsense.  Every regime which has sought equality among citizens by re-slicing the fixed pie has always destroyed the pie.  

More than that, it is also easily demonstrable that Trust arises from behaviors and actions and is not something that can be arbitrarily transferred or reallocated.  

One trusted entity can bring attention to another their trust in a second entity but the second entity then has to be seen to warrant that implied trust.  

Salmon starts out with an interesting topic but over the development of his argument fails completely to establish the empirical base for his assertions and then wanders off into a desert of false assertions, poor logic and unsound reasoning.

If media wants to address its loss of trust, it won't be through a grand coalition of Big Government, Big Media and Big Business.  Americans have already seen how that failed coalition has impoverished and immiserated every country in which it has become established.  

Better journalists making better arguments with better evidence would seem to be the real means by which to resurrect trust.  Given this essay, we are a long ways away from that happening.