Why It's Hard to Trust the Media

Prominent investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson gives a brief presentation in this video of why every news consumer should be very leery of what they're consuming. It was once the case that news outlets strove for objectivity realizing that though it may be impossible to be completely objective and disinterested in what they report, nevertheless, it was an ideal they should set for themselves and their profession.

Sometime around the middle of the the last century, however, journalists began to reason that since objectivity was attainable only in a perfect world, which this world is not, they may as well forget about trying to achieve it and instead use their platform to promote their own personal views.

Thus, journalism morphed into advocacy and propaganda, and the news consumer was left unsure of what was fact and what was simply the journalist's own opinion and bias. Journalists came to see themselves as evangelists for the causes most dear to them, which in the case of the elite news outlets were mostly liberal causes, and they coupled their evangelistic zeal with a post-modern, pragmatic view of truth.

Pragmatism holds that what's true and right is what works to promote or achieve one's goal. Thus, if one's goal is the success of a particular political party then whatever tactics bring about the election of one's favored candidates and the defeat of the opposition's candidates are justified. Objective facts don't exist anyway, on this view, and traditional moral assumptions are obsolete and need not get in the way.

Here's Attkisson's take on how the media has squandered and lost the public's trust and confidence: