According to a Pew Research Center poll last year, 75 percent of Americans don't think journalists get the facts right. Why has the percentage of Americans who had a "great deal" or a "fair amount" of trust in the media dropped from more than 70 percent around Watergate to 44 percent today?

Jay Rosen, journalism professor at New York University, wrote about it on PressThink:

"What makes it a puzzle is that during that same period, several other things were happening. Journalists were becoming better educated. They were more likely to go to journalism school, my institution. During this period, the cultural cachet of being a journalist was on the rise. Newsrooms were getting bigger, too: more boots on the ground to cover the news. Journalism was becoming less of a trade and more of a profession.

Rosen will join The Daily Circuit Thursday to discuss his theories behind the decline in trust. Craig Silverman, journalist and founder of the Regret the Error blog, will also join the discussion.

"The loss of trust is, I think, strongly related to the loss of connection on a basic human level," Silverman wrote for Poynter. "The public lost a sense of connection to the press, to journalists and to journalism."

comments powered by Disqus