OPINION

The crisis in American journalism benefits

no one
by Salena Zito | May 21, 2017, 12:04 AM Washington Examiner
DETROIT If you are a person of a certain age it's odd to drive down a
major artery in a large metropolitan American city and strain to find a
newspaper box at any of the crossroads.

That's especially true in a city such as Detroit, with a storied history of

competitive journalism that dug deep into holding power in check, whether it
was city hall, the unions or large corporations.

It's not that those papers are gone. The lack of boxes is in part because of
contractual delivery systems and partly because of vandalism. But the
disappearing boxes are mostly because we consume our news differently.

That consumption is contributing to a crisis in American journalism that

benefits no one.

Turn on the television at any given moment of the day, and you are likely to
hear the anchor say 'Breaking News' at least 12 times in one hour. Go on
Twitter, and you are likely to see the hashtags #breakingnews #scoop
#exclusive fill your timeline from reporters and news organizations in the
Washington and New York newsrooms.

And go on Facebook, and half of your friends are posting stories from a left-
leaning news organization's take on the news and the other half are posting
stories from a right-leaning news organization, and most of your friends
declare one or the other "fake news," following with lots of words in all
capital letters.

It's exhausting, it is frustrating and it leaves the consumer wary of how they
navigate the news.

And here is the hard truth: No one is exempt, there is a shared responsibility
in this lack of trust between the American people and her press, and unless
we find a way to unravel it, that mistrust is only going to get worse.

First, my profession.
Beginning in the 1980s, Washington and New York City newsrooms began to
be dominated by people who had the same backgrounds; for the most part
they went to the same Ivy League journalism schools, where they made the
right contacts and connections to get their jobs.

Yes, elite networks are a thing not just in law schools, as "Hillbilly Elegy"
author J.D. Vance so aptly described of his experiences in law school. They
also exist in Ivy League or elite journalism schools.

And the journalists who came from working-class roots found it in their best
interest to adopt the conventional, left-of-center views that were filling the
halls of newsrooms.

In short, after a while you adopt the culture you exist in either out of survival
or acceptance or a little of both. Or you really just wanted to shed your
working-class roots for a variety of reasons: shame, aspiration, ascension,
etc.

That does not make them bad people aspiration is the heart of the
American Dream but it did begin the decline of connection between elite
journalism institutions such as the New York Times and the Washington Post
and the rest of the country.

So when fewer and fewer reporters shared the same values and habits of
many of their consumers, inferences in their stories about people of faith and
their struggles squaring gay marriage or abortion with their belief systems
were picked up by the readers.

Pro-tip, don't think people can't pick up an inference, even the most subtle,
in the written word. It is as evident as a news anchor rolling his eyes at
someone on his panel he doesn't agree with.

Same goes for job losses, particularly in coal mines or manufacturing. News
reports filled with how those job losses help the environment are not going to
sit well with the person losing their job. Also: Just because they have a job
that faces an environmental challenge does not mean they hate the
environment.

For 20 years these news organizations, along with CBS, NBC and ABC, were
the only game in town. They served as gatekeepers of information, and as
their newsrooms became more and more detached from the center of the
country, consumers began to become detached from them.
And then along came the Internet. Not only were different sources now
available, but news aggregators such as Drudge made it easy to find things
giving everyone access to "alternative facts."

The universe of information expanded, and it became clear that what Peter
Jennings, Dan Rather or the New York Times told consumers was not the
whole story, and if you were a conservative (and a plurality of Americans
self-identify as center right) you lost all trust in the mainstream media.

It took 17 years for that pressure to build not just among conservatives but
also Democrats who came from a family of New Deal ideals who became
weary of the constant misrepresentation and belittling of the traditions they
held dear: church, family, guns and life.

The result was a populist explosion against all things big: big companies, big
banks, big institutions and big media. The movement went undetected by
the D.C. and New York centralized press not because they are bad people,
not because they had an ax to grind against the center of the country. They
just didn't know them. They did not know anyone like them, or if they did it
reminded them of all the things they despised about their upbringing, and
they wanted to correct those impulses.

And so they missed it. They were a little shocked by the support for Bernie
Sanders over Hillary Clinton, and they were really shocked by the support
candidate Donald J. Trump received in the primaries

And they were really, really shocked by his win.

The problem journalists face right now is that they have never really
acknowledged his win appropriately, at least not in the eyes of the people
who voted for him.

Since the day he won, the inference that his win was illegitimate has been
everywhere. It set the tone in the relationship between the voters and the
press that has only soured since November of last year.

The press acknowledging Trump's victory would go a long way to begin

winning that trust back with conservatives and his broader coalition of
voters.

You see, they aren't just conservatives. If reporters would go out and talk to
them, and more importantly listen to them, they would understand who they
are.
And that visit should be done by car, no flying in and staying at the airport
Marriot and getting points drive. Learn their community, their needs, their
values and their perspective.

The American people need to do a better job as well of critically consuming

their news and not crying victim when something is reported unfairly. Your
knee-jerk reaction should not be to run to the conservative or liberal silo that
says everything you want to hear and encasing yourself in your own bubble.

We all need to be better at this. Not everything is fake news, in fact not even
half of it is but eye rolling and inference need to be banished from the
news, and people who live outside of New York City and Washington need to
be understood with more honesty.

The American people still should be skeptical of anything they read running
to your safe place of news delivery isn't always in your best interest; critical
consumption is.

Salena Zito is a columnist for the Washington Examiner.