As the founder of a PR agency that mainly caters to tech companies, I try to keep up. What’s happening in PR? What’s the state of the media? I read, watch and listen to hours of news and commentary almost every day. Part of it is to stay in-the-know about subjects we can newsjack for our PR clients.
I'm on top of it all. The New York Times, The New York post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Atlantic, The Globe & Mail, Wired magazine (and from the indie side of things, The Racket from Matt Taibbi, The Real Story from Terry Glavin, Rebel News, The Counter Signal, UNSAFE from Ann Coulter, a motley crew of X accounts...) Partly, it's just an old habit of being curious about this world.
There's a lot to love in all of those media outlets and among all of those honourable knights of the media world who cut through the BS.
But I'll often complain (in Slack, on social media or just over a pint at the pub) about the state of media today. It's not that I dislike the media. I love this business. But it's like the lament of a parent or sibling over the lost potential of who is now directionless, broke, on their second divorce, facing a likely stint in prison... And the lament is that it was just all sooooo avoidable.
Our PR agency can’t be successful if people think the media is just a big swamp of lies. Or at least, our business model would need to change from pitching reporters to pitching… social media mavens. (To be honest, we are already doing some of that. Influencer outreach has increasingly become a core PR service. As well, podcasts were seen as a “nice-to-have” bonus in terms of media coverage.
These days, some PR agency clients actually value podcasts more than legacy media. I have to say, they have a point: I was just on a podcast that got 27 views. Wait… 27 views? That’s it? Well, yes, but out of those 27 who watched From Journalist to PR Powerhouse: How Jonathon Narvey Helps Tech Companies Shine, two actually called up looking for PR services for their tech startup. That’s some amazing ROI.)
Still, one thing I believe is going to actually happen:
Trust in the media will actually improve in 2025… because it has to
This prediction is not a sign I’m glowingly optimistic about where things are headed.
The truth is, trust in the media is about as low as it can go right now. It can only go up in 2025.
According to a recent Gallup poll:
Americans continue to register record-low trust in the mass media, with 31% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly,” similar to last year’s 32%. Americans’ trust in the media -- such as newspapers, television and radio -- first fell to 32% in 2016 and did so again last year.
For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Another 33% of Americans express “not very much” confidence.
So what makes me so optimistic? There’s the ABC News lawsuit settlement for $15 million (that will go towards the Trump Presidential Library). As Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn noted this week in The Racket, journalists may be aware now that they can’t just straight-up lie about people because they don’t agree with their politics.
The real threat of a lawsuit is bound to put a damper on any instinct to re-do the Russian Collusion hoax or any other hoax in the service of a political narrative. (In fact, journalists are now going to be somewhat leery of what they’ve said in the past that might have gone over the line.)
If journalists can’t be counted on to tell the truth out of some kind of code of professional ethics, perhaps the threat of career-ending punitive damages will keep them straight.
Beyond that lawsuit, which probably few outside of media paid any attention to, there’s also X (yes, formerly known as Twitter).
Community Notes is an excellent antidote to media lies. The Guardian has left X because its constant stream of dumb commie propaganda kept getting zinged virtually every time it posted something… but that won’t save it. Anyone can post a dumb Guardian link on X and the Community Notes will come, either way.
Now we know who’s watching the watchmen: the people.
(While I'm a huge fan of Elon Musk, I don't think his belief that "we are the media now" is true or even should be true. Journalism has at times been an honourable and valuable profession - and not just a hobby practiced by social media mavens. It can be again.)
So, I’m not saying that the media is about to get more trustworthy because most individual journalists or their employers desire that outcome. I think for the most part, they’re going to be scared straight.
I'll take that as a win.
A healthy media landscape is good for (our PR) business
I love good journalism. And everyone on our PR team still gets a kick out of getting a positive response from a journalist at a legacy media outlet. The more, the better!
So I’m hopeful. We’re turning this around. To all the honest, skilled reporters out there who are doing a great job already in helping us understand our world better, thank you for what you do. You can expect to keep hearing from us in 2025.
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