On Public Distrust, Colleges Could Learn From Journalism’s Mistakes

On Public Distrust, Colleges Could Learn From Journalism’s Mistakes
Clara Turnage, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2017/07/13
The headline of this article makes a great point but unfortunately the article doesn't follow up, choosing instead to blame distrust on misunderstandings on the part of the public. For example: "When people talk about their confidence about higher education or the media, they don’t pause and think, ‘What would happen if we didn’t have them?’" OK, fine, but that's not what causes distrust. Yes, people focus on "their indiscretions and controversies," but in the case of news media there were just so many of them, ranging from a concentration of corporate ownership, a focus on the trivial, stage and altered images, abetting the misleading of the public, all the way to outright sexism and  racism. We didn't need apologists for the rich and powerful, which is why we began to distrust the press, and to believe we could live without them. More...