When the mainstream media discarded its usual passivity and got surprisingly aggressive in its Katrina coverage, the public responded positively. In fact, the industry has apparently even gotten a boost in the polls.
Widely hailed for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina, the American news media appears to be regaining the trust of the American people.
According to Gallup’s annual Governance survey, the number of Americans who trust the press has increased significantly since last year, although it’s still slightly lower than what Gallup has charted in recent years. […]
Gallup’s study, conducted Sep. 12-15, finds that 50% of Americans say they have a great deal (13%) or fair amount (37%) of trust and confidence in the mass media, up from 45% at the same time last year. Forty nine percent of respondents say they do not have very much trust (37%) or none at all (12%) in the media, down from 55% last year.
For reasons that defy comprehension, more of the public believes the media is too liberal (46%) as opposed to too conservative (16%), but ideology aside, Katrina coverage seems to have helped the media’s credibility overall.
And to think, a lot of media figures, early on, were poised to give the government a pass on Katrina.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewed former Louisiana Sen. John Breaux and pressed him about the issue of the levee funding. Blitzer wanted to know specifically who was responsible for not getting the job done: “Who resisted? Was it the Clinton administration?” (Emphasis added.) Blitzer never bothered to ask about the Bush administration’s role in neglecting the levees.
Last week, while the federal relief efforts unraveled, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews cheered, “Last night, we showed you the full force of a superpower government going to the rescue.” His report would have been more impressive (not to mention more accurate) if a superpower government had actually gone to the rescue at the time.
And here’s how the Washington Post, in a Sept. 1 editorial that should live in infamy, described the administration’s disaster relief: “So far, the federal government’s immediate response to the destruction of one of the nation’s most historic cities does seem commensurate with the scale of the disaster.”
It took the industry a couple of days to wake up, but the fact that it did seems to have helped its public standing. Maybe media leaders will realize that people appreciate aggressive reporting and use Katrina as a turning point for harder-hitting reporting? It’s unlikely, but a guy can dream.