Washington, DC – Famous journalists and executives at several news organizations face a problem of how the media can restore trust among the American people.
Semafor is the digital news platform that is composed of traditional media veterans Ben Smith and Justin B. Smith.
The summit, called “innovation to restore trust in news,” began with Gallup Chairman Jim Clifton sending an alert in the latest poll, showing that only 31% of Americans trust the media either “big things” or “reasonable”, focusing on the people who were on these polls, with only 8% of whom only 8% of them “awesome trust.”
“The current media situation in this country is in the last place or secondary place compared to every other agency … someone really needs to address this.”
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CNN CEO Mark Thompson said “staying authentic” serious journalism branding about the network, rather than leaning towards opinions, will ultimately lift the company out of the financial struggle. (Joseph A. Wulfsohn/Fox News Digital)
CNN CEO Mark Thompson said he himself distrusts the “mass media” because he instinctively questioned everything as a reporter.
“I think I would rather have a questioning audience than make a difference to the media,” Thompson said. “I think we should use a box of Kleenex to melt our lost eyes of traditional trust and try to figure out how to rebuild almost adult relationships rather than like our audiences, because we need to trust and believe everything we say.”
But in terms of gaining trust, Thompson insists that CNN’s solution is to “stay true” of its decades-old brand as a news hub and “work very hard to stay accurate” while focusing on direct news rather than opinions.
Joe Kahn, executive editor of The New York Times, said he believes one way his paper seeks trust is to let consumers come out through cameras or podcasts to understand the “personality” of their journalists to discuss their reporting and news reporting processes. He shrugged, the polls showed widespread distrust in the media, insisting that the data was “very flawed.”
Ben Smith of Semafor, a former columnist for Times, asked Kahn if he felt the need to find a conservative journalist because the newsroom was “about the liberal you expected.”
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“I really don’t think it’s going out to hire conservatives, I’m considering going out to hire liberals,” Kahn replied. “I do want to hire more people from different geographical locations, different personal experiences, different backgrounds, different schools, different education because you’re actually often in part of your own personal experience, where you grew up, who you’re part of a religious family, whether you have military experience or not, whether you have any opinion on news, which is the importance of news.
“It’s not the same as saying I’m going out and looking for someone who voted for Trump and put them on my staff. As a newsroom, I think it’s totally the right incentive.”
New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn insists on finding journalists with different backgrounds and experiences in the newsroom, rather than seeking individuals just because they are Trump voters. (Joseph A. Wulfsohn/Fox News Digital)
NBCuniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde suggested that solutions to media distrust are investing in local media.
“The fundamental advantage of democracy is a strong, free and independent press. The backbone of our media industry is our local radio stations,” Kant said. “So, as a broadcast network, the backbone of our business is our local TV stations. We have a huge footprint on local TV and local numbers across the country, and we find that this is actually a huge competitive advantage for us, not only building trust, but also hoping that over time, there are many news reports. More and more news reports originated from local news reports, and therefore from news reports at the time and became the importance of the nation.”
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Cesar Conde, chairman of NBCuniversal News Group, suggested that more investment in local news is a way for the media to win American trust. (Joseph A. Wulfsohn/Fox News Digital)
NPR CEO Katherine Maher turned the table and urged the media to “believe in your audience.”
“We’ve been talking about how to make sure we’re trusted. It’s actually trusting your audience. They’re smart people,” Mach said. “You know, this is one of the things we learned at Wikimedia, like, showing our work, being very clear about where we get the information. Be confident that the audience knows exactly how they’re going to use this information… On NPR, I think our goal is distrustful. It’s trustworthy. It’s trustworthy.”
She explained: “Journalism is really amazing as someone who hasn’t experienced journalism in a pretty self-regulating industry. Their peers don’t know that their peers are a little lazy or shoddy. And you tend to be in situations where the public doesn’t know what is, in some cases, they don’t know how to determine, you don’t know what they are… Don’t lean on Wikipedia, but 90% don’t check citations.
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NPR CEO Katherine Maher said her news organization’s goal is “not trustworthy. It’s trustworthy.” (Joseph A. Wulfsohn/Fox News Digital)
Fox News chief political host Bret Baier said his press attitude was “hard but fair” and that the “emotion” in the report plays a key role in winning trust among Americans.
“I think more people need to do, what I try to do and what I try to do is to remove emotions and thus make emotions cover up the news,” Baier said. “And, over the years, it has been a problem and some people are excited about it and lose half of their audience.”
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Wall Street Journal editor Emma Tucker also expressed the importance of pulling emotions out of the report, agreeing that Washington reporters were “scareless” by President Trump.
“These stories come out every day. And, you know, as journals, we’re introducing them. We’re not adding any spins, we’re not adding any emotions because I think these stories speak for themselves. And I think it’s reasonable to say too early to say that the collapse is.” “There’s no room for emotions in journals…We’re trying to give people good information, information they can use, which is valuable, which is helpful, and if we start to cause emotions, it becomes less valuable. So, I think our power is especially our power, especially making emotions go away and it may be different for other media, but it’s not different for us.”
Fox News chief political host Bret Baier and Wall Street Journal editor Emma Tucker suggested injecting “emotion” into media reports, which inspired American distrust. (Joseph A. Wulfsohn/Fox News Digital)
Tucker stressed that her essay reporters were “observers, not participants” and asked them to “check bias” so that their personal opinions would not affect their reports.
She also emphasizes “fundamental focus on the audience.”
“Don’t think of what other newsrooms would have? Or would this win my award? …What would other journalists think of? It’s not the driving force behind journalism. What has to be useful to readers? We tell them what they don’t know? We tell them to add value to them?” Tucker said. “I think the fourth thing I’m going to say is that you don’t have to be afraid of the consequences of what you’re going to post. I think in places like Washington, you’re all in this faint bubble, and everyone has something to say, it’s easy to start and it’s easy to start being afraid of the consequences you’re going to have. But I think that’s your importance.
“I mean, a good example is the story of the Biden era we did,” she continued. “Some of my colleagues in New York warned me that it would cause a big reaction. I don’t know how powerful it is, but anyway-but I’m glad I didn’t stop thinking about it because it’s an important journalism business, and we know, we know, we’ve published it.”
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Other high-profile interviews at the summit include former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, Sirius XM host Megyn Kelly and FCC chairman Brendan Carr.
Semafor’s summit was held in an intimate hall inside the Gallup building in Washington, D.C., where the Semafor DC office is located. The attendees were mainly composed of media reporters from several news outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and The Daily Beast, as well as Semafor’s reporters and staff.
Also found among the audience are former CNN CEO Chris Licht and journalist Mark Halperin.
