Who can repair journalism's image? The past year has been the most miserable in the history of modern American journalism. [...]
"My impression from my contact with readers both in person and via e-mail and telephone suggests to me that we always start behind the eight ball anyway," says Mr. Wycliff of The Chicago Tribune. "People suspect that we've got an ax to grind, we've got an agenda, we are unrelievedly liberal or relentlessly conservative."
"They don't believe from the beginning that we're playing square," he says.
Ultimately, some of those who monitor the media suggest, detecting lies may prove a less challenging task than changing perceptions.
Public's cynicism about media has become a pressing concern: At a time when public distrust of the news media appears to be at a dangerously high level, there is evidence of a deep and fundamental disagreement between those who produce news and those who consume it.
Although most journalists believe quality and values are vital elements of their work and see themselves as providing an important civic function, the reading and viewing public seems to think of journalism as a bottom-line-driven enterprise populated by the ethically challenged. [...]
Jay Rosen, chairman of the Journalism Department at New York University, says the media have failed to inform the public about their own evolving role.
The increasingly intrusive presence of the journalist in the story itself -- thanks in part to the proliferation of analysis and commentary in recent years -- has raised public concerns that have not been adequately addressed, Rosen says. "The journalist looms larger in the news. . . . It creates suspicions; it creates questions," he says. "The press became a player but never bothered to say what it was playing for."
