Sometimes called “the last innocent year,” 1964 was the high point of American institutional trust at 77%, per Gallup polling. Both the failed Vietnam War and corruption scandals at home — such as Watergate and the findings of the Church Committee on CIA abuses — deeply damaged public faith in the following years. By 1979, it had plummeted to 29%.

The traditional view of the press was never based on some contrived, mathematical notion of “balance,” i.e. five paragraphs of Republicans for every five paragraphs of Democrats. The ideal instead was that we showed you everything we could see, good and bad, ugly and not, trusting that a better-informed public would make better decisions. This... See more

So it is not just the case that the business of news is challenged, or that people are sceptical of news media and generally hold journalism in low regard—though both of these things are true. It is that on almost every measurable indicator, the social contract between much of the public and the news, as traditionally conceived, reported and... See more