I do want to thank cspan for taking the time to cover this and points out it would be good to have other microphones. As you know, im going to talk about this, but i wanted to share with you our agenda. Its alarming, as you know, the theme of our conference has been sponsoring freedom and defending democracy. I want to talk a little bit about what we are facing. Then i want to cover about how our homes are media platforms and what it has done and bias in the news media. I try to go very quickly. As you know, for a long time, we knew that we were meeting in washington and our team spon sorg freedom and defending democracy. I actually worked with colleagues to decide on the theme in october. But never did i realize that we will be at a time when we would be going through so many things. If you would allow me, i wanted to start by saying that recent attacks on diversity have chilled fre speech. My legal colleagues would say it has a chilling effect. These attacks have also affected journalism and the role of journalism necessary our democracy. Let me explain. You north korea amid widespread Political Polarization in our society we are legitimately concerned that donors and powerful politicians are usurping roles in journalism. I want to read it from the site, i usually dont, because i want everyone to understand whats going on. I know you may have ideas and solutions. In the spirit of full disclosure im at university of North Carolina chapel hill where we went through a controversy two years ago which should not have even happen. We were trying to hire Nicole Hannah jones. I knew Nicole Hannah jones before she was Nicole Hannah jones. She used to come to our classes, she was a graduate of our school. In one of the zoom sessions we had asked her would you like to come and teach here . She said yes but you wouldnt believe all of these went through approval, the board of trustees, which in olden days were known as a rubber stamp, they said no, we are going to vet everything and they turned it down. Its funny. Im not going to get into that but actually its not funny but you get the idea that texas a m went through the whole thing. I wanted to say these were two big examples but there are so many other things happen that people are facing. And such problems for our field and democracy. Nobody is worrying who the physics chair is on your campus or who your chemistry chair or the Public Health, though Public Health got into trouble in texas a m because the professor was guest speaking somewhere and somebody reported her. Think of that. Youre speaking in class and somebody reports against you. Without much ado i want to just put it out there and then move on to something more exciting. That has has transformd our field. I wanted to take you back to 2007 because as you know, a lot of the people we teach in our classes, a lot of the people we interact in our society have this digital divide. They may not have a car anymore, although they replace their car with this digital device. Look at the transformation we have gone through in our industry. And thats illustrated by this cartoon, the cartoon was done in 2009 and you can see, easily imagine one little update which is tweet, tweet is no longer 140 characters. But you get the idea. It has become a powerful agenda in communication. In 2007 steve jobs introdhiesd iphone. Im not going to play that, you can look at it at your low pressure. He talks about a device that can do everything. Your phone, your music and your communication, everything. And it does. Literally. Think of how many times you have taken pictures using your phone. That has created, i want to skip this, this has created a whole bunch of tools and we have so little time but look at it this way. You and i have used five of these tools but theyre not the same tools. Thats the marvel of our field. And this is all this is while we are living and talking. Tiktok if you look in 2018, wasnt there, and now media entities are doing things on tiktok. Which brings me to the political function of it. Agenda setting works on how agendas are set in media. You have the retail and then you have the blue bar that is literally the gatekeeping function that happens to the media. And then you have all this coverage. So we, we work. So thats the first lesson i wanted to convey that. We mix our news ageneral tas. No more is it you read one media. Also we have the power to weave together the content. Think of media that you observe. You did not only just read one story and just have your opinion. We construct our identity from the information we see. You dont have to go very far. You switch on your mobile phone itll give you information that comes to you. So in many ways how has the media agenda changed . We must be on a more on more media channels. Dont go too far. Look at campus entity, look at the dallas cowboy, look at anybody, look at the white house. They have their own media platform. They have the and its the brands lead the narrative. Its not enough to just having their work. They are doing story telling. Story telling is the root of our written communication. Why . Because powerful stories last forever. I worked on some questions, you would not find the answer to those questions in my presentation because obviously we are hosting a panel so that we could resolve some of those issues. These are some important questions we all can think of which we which media platforms lead narratives. I want to get to one that will illustrate how our field has been transform. This is something we all know. Which is during the watergate, this is 1976, a lot of and the vietnam war. The media had a big role. 2 3 of the media, 2 3 of the people trusted the media. But things became bad in 2004 when 44 of people these are gallup data that i just put labels on it. 32 . That was the lowest point in the 2016 election. And were headed for another election. So 2018 there was what we call a trump bump. People who realized that hey, this is crazy. We must engage with the media. So some of theme people write. But we are back to a bad place now. This is last year. Only 34 of Americans Trust the media. I want to take you to a minute where you can say the question gallup asked is phrased incorrectly because media, your media may not be my media. It is no more the three media entities in 1973. But you know, our idea of the media may be very varied. I want to put that disclaimer out there. Think of 1974. Walter cronkite was the most trusted man in america. Then i want to skip that too. I put in the videos because if anybody wants to see the slides then you can enjoy the videos. People trusted the media. People trusted, so much so that thats Katherine Graham in the middle and you can recognize the other two people. Bob woodward on your right. These are younger versions. Then august 9, 1974. Almost to the month. This happened. This was a golden time of the media. And this became part of american lore. Not only this, here are other examples. Katherine graham. She won a pulitzer in 1997. And then the polls published in 2017. So these were great moments of the media. Now we almost have lost it. Why has americas trust declined . I doubt people are even reading the news. That brings me to another aspect whichcy found i find it fascinating but i just wanted to share with you. There are media entities that no more tell you that hey we want to be independent. They will tell you that we thats the branding. For example, this is the media chart which tracks down media. I got one of them, if you look at the central which is c, which is centrist. They have bbc, forbes, market watch, all of that. But youll see the wall street journal has two locations on that. One is the wall street journal news which is obviously central, but if you look at the right, which is the right, the wall street journal is also located there fox news is the extreme. On the other side msnbc. Npr. And New York Times news. I do want to tell you, none of these people are ashamed of this listing in. Fact, these biases are bragged. Fox news came about to say hey we are going to share the conservative voice and reveled in it. Msnbc is not ashamed to say what they are. So bias must be a very good thing. And it is. So that relates to, people have gotten skeptical. Will Americans Trust in media . What can media leaders do to restore trust . I believe that the answer to the question lies in founders and leaders innovations. Noablg has a big role to play in how people, i shared with you the smartphone. In fact, and the insight we talked about, i have tried to address that. But i just wanted to start with some opening remarks. And that leads us to our featured panelists. So im going to now just get to the featured panelists and i ask the featured panelists to come up with just some ideas where they would react to whatever i shared. And then we will take it from there. If thats ok with you. We havent decided on an order so you can decide on an order. Theres a microphone here so you can pick up one of them. Whoever wants to go first. Ill leave that on so you know the speakers as we are talking. Im honored that these speakers who are they agreed to do this. You know. Braving the washington traffic and the rain and Everything Else to travel. Lets have a round of applause for our speakers. [applause] lets get start. Im jay rosen. Gallup in october, 2022, published this common headline youll certainly recognize. American trust in media remains near record low. That is a headline that one could have seen hundreds of times in the last few years. I think we all know that story and recognize it. I thought i would use my time today to suggest some ways to complicate that story. Of record low trust in American News media. One of my ways of complicating that picture is what i call emily bells warning. Because emily bell, Columbia University, used to pester me with this every time trust as a subject came up. So i think of it as emilys law. She says, when quality and independent Public Service journalism was strong with strong practices, it is trusted by the public. Thats a good thing. But, she says, the existence of trusted news is not itself a good thing. This is what emily bell used to continually tell me. It could be, she would say, but not necessarily. At first, i didnt understand what she was saying about this. And i couldnt figure out why she kept making this point. How could trusted news be a bad thing . There is an answer to this question. And here it is. This is emilys answer. But im paraphrasing it. The existence of trusted news is not itself a good thing because trusted news might be trusted because it confirms a bloodthirsty propaganda claim. In other words, people can trust in the news theyre getting but if the news is prop began dissic, thats not the good thing that it might appear to be. So when there is demand in the audience for confirmation on something thats false, there will be news of that type that will emerge and some people will trust it. And so trusted news is not always a good thing. Depends on the news. Second complication is that with puzzles like that at the center of it, researchers in our profession have changed and instead of asking themselves the agonizing question why are we, the news media, so untrusted, theyre focused on something much more practical and probably useful which is what does trust trustworthy practice look like today in journalism and focusing on whether your trustworthy practices are today then you can use the fall of trust as a energizer of your work. Lots of people are interested in this question now. So the focus on what is trustworthy, whether or not you are trusted is one way researchers in our field have tried to complicate this subject. A third way to complicate the picture of trust is to go to the towns and cities in the u. S. Where the community itself is solved in supporting the news produders producers. In many cases now, it didnt used to be true years ago but it is now, local philanthropy is realizing there wont be local news if the community doesnt organize itself to fund it. Am i right . More and more we see local philanthropy wake up and say hey if we dont make it happen, theres not going to be a good news provider in this community. And thats doing something about trust. A different way a community is involved where the salt lake tribune, metropolitan daily in salt lake city, has actually turned into a nonprofit and it trusts in the support the community will give it as a whole every day that they go to work. Theyre trusting the community to support the newspaper the way cities have always had to support libraries and concert halls and aquariums and stadiums and community colleges. The community itself has to be involved in the preservation of these things which are understood as zivic assets. And thats a better way of using your time and your energy than figuring out how to get republicans to trust you. Which is my fourth complication. The asymmetry of the findings in a typical trust report are fortunate Pay Attention to. In the 2022 report, American Trust in news media remained sharply polarized along partisan line they say. 70 of democrats saying they trust the news media some or a lot of the time. 27 of independents saying that. And only 14 of republicans saying they have a great deal of a fair amount of confidence in the press. If were going to compare numbers like that, and it is a very important number, 70 among democrats versus 14 among republicans, if were going to compare numbers like that we have to add this fact. For the leadership provided by trump himself and his maga movement, lowering trust in the Mainstream Media is both a policy goal and a source of energy, emotion, character, and drive. So when you see 14 of republicans, only 14 of republicans, trust the news media, you have to picture that lowering the trust of the mainstream news media is a political tactic and part of how the republican machine works. They have integrated it into their style of politics and so we should expect that number to be driven down. Thats how they roll. That is what theyre trying to do. So its not just descended from some bad media guys in the sky producing low trust in the Mainstream Media is a political project that has been extremely successful. So i hope youll take my advice and look upon emilys law and some of the other complications i have brought to you today. Youre next. Thank you, dave. Lets move on to james. We go in whatever order . It was somewhat random but now we have an order. Problem solvers. Im going to take it a slightly different way which is to talk about local a little bit. I think when we talk about trust in news, we talk about trust in news as this uber number and the numbers are really different when you look at National News and local news. We did a poll, the gallup poll we did a couple of months ago showed that local has a 17 higher Approval Rating than national does. It was 14 local over National Many 2019. As much as i would love to say thats because locals werent trusted, its just that nationals dropped more. But theres a significant difference between the two. Locals are trusted in the low 40s, high 30s, versus low 20s for National News. I think anybody who has worked in both of those knows how different the two types of news are. Thats why every time we sit dunn and talk about what we want to do and the next thing we do, its always please keep focusing on the localnational divide. Knight Foundation Funds local journalism and i want to continue to say, while thing rnts where they need to be, at least things are better at the will call level. Why is that . When you share physical space with people you share problems that are nonpartisan. Anybody sitting in a traffic jam is pissed off about it regardless of whether youre a republican, democrat or independent. When a hurricane is coming to town nobody check yours political identification, youre all just trying to get the hell out of town and keep your property security. If the local choir is going on americas got talent only a psychopath will root against. The there are a lot of things in your daily life that are not completely partisan at a local level and because youre sharing physical real estate with your neighbors and schoolmates. I do think theres more hope in the short term for will call and national. I also think that why is National News, especially if you look at cable station, why sit the way it is . They make a lot of money dividing people. Thats where the revenue. Is your ratings go up, you get people to scream at each other on television. The more eyeballs you have, the more advertising you can sell. Its a Good Business to be in to create conflict and argues. I think at a local level you dont have the same motivation, especially in world where can youre looking at much smaller population centers. If youre one of the cable stations and you want to write off half the country, you know, you can do that. As long as you can get some decent percentage of the other half to get addicted to the product youre putting out there. If youre looking at a city thats got two Million People in it, its tougher to write off half of it by going too far any direction in terms of coverage. I think you tend to see local newspaper, local television tend to probably be a little bit more of the old model of, are they not old model but the comodel now of im not going to use the word objectivity, thats a word in journalism thats been beaten to the point nobody knows what it means anymore. But in a more not focusing on opinion journalism but focusing on the percentage of the product trying to do news stories. I think it could be interesting to see what happens with lo chasm the other thing i find fascinating is the most trusted form of local media, its not even close and hasnt been far long time is local television. Theyre not in the discussion as much about the future of local news is. I come from a digital world. Ive been in digital so long i was in it when trumpkin was in it. There wont be people never county in america that will start something digitally. Local television with some of the tools coming out like nextgen tv have opportunities to build trust, more trust in the local audience. The reason i find the local tv numbers so surprising is the biggest krit soism local television has been its coverage o