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Murphy Martin Commentary
August 4, 2005

 "TRUST IN THE MEDIA"

Last week while taking a look at television: Then and Now, we looked at the sagging numbers that have been pestering television for a number of years. Sets in use are down. Total viewers are down. Less hard news is used to fill the evening dinner-hour newscasts and more entertainment features and magazine pieces are slotted where hard news stories once prevailed. In the midst of sagging numbers for what had been the most powerful social-instrument since day one in television history, there rose another troubling issue. Trust!  And the questioning was not aimed just at television, it was aimed across the board at ALL media. Radio, cable networks, newspapers, news magazines -- if it covered news of the day people were questioning it's veracity.

By 1989, according to opinion polls, public trust in the media had sagged to 54%, and it reached an all-time low of 32% during the post-election fallout from the 2000 presidential campaign.. In May of 2003, a USA Today/Gallup Poll showed public confidence in the media at an anemic 36%. And, those numbers were months before the scandals at two of the nations top newspapers The Washington Post and the New York Times, where reporters admitted plagiarizing and fabricating major news stories.

Nor had Dan Rather yet bloodied the CBS-Eye with his failure to check all the facts surrounding his 60-Minutes feature regarding President George Bush's military service. Rather was allowed to escape the hangman's noose by resigning the position he coveted for so many years. Others connected with that story, despite also being longtime CBS employees, could not escape the gallows, each of them was fired.

When members of giant news teams faltered, TRUST in the media became more questionable. Radio talk shows became harder to monitor for facts. Many talk-show stations began using 6-second delays hoping to catch some misrepresentation of facts, but for the most part all they were able to catch was an occasional vulgar or profane utterance that was too much for that station. Today the bathroom humor and rude, crude language is the rule of the day. It almost seems some talk-show hosts think they sound more hip, and reach the audience they are after only when they use what the stations with the larger audience share
use--bathroom humor.

The leading daily newspaper in Texas, the Dallas Morning News, had to refund more than twenty-million-dollars to advertisers after they discovered their circulation figures had been inflated. The refunds also led to numerous layoffs at that paper, not because those laid off were involved in the jacked-up circulation figures, but because the refund to advertisers forced a scale-back in the paper's budget.

It's no wonder a declining trust in the media, amidst charges of liberal bias, charges of conservative bias, charges of (fill in the blank) bias. It is no wonder some believe television is no longer the most powerful social instrument yet devised. They believe the Internet has taken that title. I still do not believe this is true. Not until computer units reach the total cross-section of people television reaches, not until more than one person watches as is often the case with television viewers, not until the Internet reaches the raw numbers of sets in use comparable to television will I believe Internet has thrust the title from television.

Whatever the cause and effect of media distrust, declining viewers in television, declining sets in use in television, despite the questionable tastes heard on the airwaves across America without the judicious attention from the FCC, despite ALL the problems in media today ... there is still enough value in media properties for families to go to court to get control. Even your own flesh and blood will end loyalties if their part of the pie is threatened. As we saw this week when the Rupert Murdoch family, one of the biggest media
conglomerates of 2005 appeared in open war in the courts.

Stay tuned. This eight-billion-dollar family squabble may fill the newscasts, newspapers, and news magazines for weeks to come! It takes a while to get the answers when that much money is at stake.

Murphy Martin

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Previous commentaries:
July 28 - "Television Then and Now"
July 21 -  "The Mick"
July 14 - "Forty Years and Counting"