The crisis of trust in the media: When the messenger becomes the message

Trust is an interesting currency. Unlike money, it cannot be printed, borrowed indefinitely or replenished by an institution simply reminding people of its history. It accumulates through experience, is tested by conduct and can be depleted by disappointment. A media organisation may spend decades establishing its reputation, only to discover that the public no longer grants it the authority it once took for granted. Its journalists may still produce stories but something essential has weakened: the presumption that the institution deserves to be believed.

Such is the predicament confronting traditional media in an age when almost anyone with a smartphone, an internet connection and an audience can become a distributor and interpreter of news. The emergence of newsfluencers has made this predicament more visible but it would be a mistake to treat them as its original cause. They are, in many respects, both products of the media’s trust deficit and beneficiaries of the opportunities it has created.