- The mass media faces a trust crisis at the same time it’s being targeted by Trump and his allies.
- The NY Times, WSJ, and others tell BI how they’re working to connect with audiences across a polarized US.
- Reversing the trend of declining trust will take time and each approach has limitations.
President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly targeted the mainstream press — but their legal and rhetorical attacks are just part of a larger crisis facing the media.
Recent Gallup data shows that trust in mass media is at its lowest level in five decades, with 36% of Americans saying they don’t trust it at all.
The erosion of trust is especially concerning for broad-based news outlets that often try to hold power to account while appealing to increasingly polarized audiences across the US.
Top news executives tell Business Insider they’re taking concrete steps to connect with audiences by increasing transparency and deepening engagement.
New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn told BI his outlet has moved to provide more information about reporters and their expertise, and has encouraged its journalists to address readers directly on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
Kahn said he sees a “growth opportunity” in building relationships between reporters and the audience, particularly through video.
Specifically, he said he’s seeking “That more direct relationship that’s been more a feature of Instagram and TikTok, where people want to have a direct relationship with creators.”
He added that illuminating the human process of reporting could enhance its journalistic value.
“It’s not a model of storytelling that’s limited to influencers and marketers,” he said.
Kahn said the Times is also “actively” considering evolving its comment section, which allows people to weigh in on stories or ask questions.
The Wall Street Journal is likewise trying to nurture its relationship with readers, taking a page from its tech columnist Joanna Stern, who has a popular newsletter and video series. The outlet has started to put more journalists in front of the camera, doing Q&As and explainer videos.
“We have a number of individual writers and reporters who have a direct relationship with our readers, and I like that and want to encourage more of that,” said Charles Forelle, deputy editor in chief of the Journal.
News organizations are examining their editorial mix
Outlets looking to connect with a broad audience are also focused on striking the right mix of stories.
Under Emma Tucker, who became the editor in chief in 2023, the Journal has increased its use of data to better understand what stories people are reading.
“The biggest thing we pay attention to is engagement, which is a proxy for satisfaction: Did you read the thing and spend time with it?” Forelle said.
Other papers are trying to broaden their audience through changes to the editorial product. The Los Angeles Times’ owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, has called for a more balanced approach to covering Trump and hired conservatives to reshape the opinion section. Jeff Bezos has also said he wants to hire more conservative opinion writers at The Washington Post and focus more on free markets and personal liberties. Both of those moves have been met with considerable backlash in those newsrooms and with some paying readers, however.
Then there’s leaning into local news, the one area of the media ecosystem that’s a bright spot on the trust meter.
In 2023, Comcast put its over 200 affiliates and over 40 NBCU local stations under NBC News head Cesar Conde. The result has been the network and affiliates teaming up on big breaking news stories like the Los Angeles fires and recent plane crashes, local TV reporters going on national shows like “Meet the Press” and “Dateline,” and local and national desks cross-promoting each other.
In one example, NBC News enlisted dozens of its local stations to report about the nationwide availability of Narcan, a narcotics overdose treatment.
It’s not hard to see a day when NBC News could cede coverage of a big local story entirely to a local station.
“Local TV is there, it’s alive and well,” said Rebecca Blumenstein, president of editorial at NBC News, who has been charged with carrying out the integration. “People depend on it for safety. People have relationships with their sportscaster, their weather person. Local is more trusted than any other form of media. We’re cognizant and respectful of it. And it’s something we’re actively building on.”
Separately, some news organizations are investing in marketing campaigns that highlight their value and how they do the work of journalism. The BBC recently released a short film showing how it fights disinformation. Hearst Newspapers just announced a new campaign, starting with the San Francisco Chronicle and Houston Chronicle, that promotes its local papers’ role in keeping people informed.
Mass media is under assault
Mainstream outlets are trying to make inroads in trust at a time when they are under threat from a hostile White House and brutal business climate.
Trump and his administration are reviving complaints against TV networks, challenging public news funding, and blocking some outlets from covering events. Surveys show some of the outlets in the crosshairs, like the AP and CBS News, are viewed by the public as nonpartisan.
The end of the monoculture and the shift to digital has also weakened the business models of many news outlets, making it harder for them to fight back.
It’s a time of particular flux in TV news as cord-cutting hits networks’ bottom line, with leadership changing, anchors exiting, and mergers looming. As some conglomerates mull mergers to survive, the White House could make it more difficult to get those deals through.
On the digital side, advertisers are spending most of their budgets with Google and Meta, and some are avoiding news altogether out of fear of political backlash.
By now, most news outlets have developed multiple revenue streams from subscriptions, events, e-commerce, and the like to offset their dependence on advertising and support their newsgathering operations.
But people won’t pay for news they don’t trust it in the first place.
Moving the needle on trust is hard
There’s research to back up the strategies newsrooms like the Times and Journal are employing.
The problem is that moving the needle on trust is a slow process and each strategy doesn’t work equally with all groups of people.
Some transparency moves only work with people who already are inclined to trust you and can backfire with those who don’t, for example, said Nic Newman, a researcher at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Abandon your editorial heritage or change your newsroom makeup too drastically, and in trying to appeal to new people, you risk alienating your base. (The Washington Post lost 75,000 subscriptions after it changed its opinion strategy, on top of an earlier loss of 300,000 after it killed a presidential endorsement of Kamala Harris, NPR reported.)
“You have to decide who you want to be trusted by,” Newman said.
Bandwidth is another limiting factor. Reporters can only make so many vertical videos on top of everything else they’re doing. The Times publishes 200 articles a day, but only a small fraction of them turn into a reporter video.
Legacy newsrooms are also tradition-bound. The Times isn’t going to change its social-media policy that bars reporters from sharing their personal political opinions, even though some in the newsroom think it’s time to abandon the tradition of appearing objective.
Some analysts and newsroom insiders think mainstream outlets should play to their strengths, even if it means limiting their ambitions.
“Institutional journalism at the moment is definitely being diminished and its trust is being affected,” Newman said. “Can that be reversed? It requires a mix of all these things. Not all these things are possible. It requires engaging in community building, which is one thing that influencers are really good at and traditional media is not.”
Many news execs believe there’s still the opportunity to grow and reach new audiences. Pew Research Center data published in October showed, for example, that younger Republicans were more likely than their older counterparts to turn to CNN, the Times, and other mainstream outlets for election news.
Kahn said there are many curious readers that the Times hasn’t reached yet. A Times rep said its top 10 states for subscriber growth rates in the last five years were all outside the Northeast and West Coast and that the South is leading the way in audience growth. The Midwest and South — which largely voted for Trump in 2024 — make up 42% of its readership so far this year, the rep said.
Still, Pew found more than twice as many Democrats as Republicans rely on the Times for political news.
“I’m not making a claim that lots of people who are hard-core MAGA right are among the main demo of New York Times readers,” Kahn said. “The more people consider themselves partisans, the less likely they are to want to engage with a news brand that isn’t aligned with their partisan interest. But I do think those people get a lot more attention than they actually represent.”
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