The Future of Truth

Conventional news organizations are in decline. The possible consequences for democracy are troubling.

“We journalists make it a point to know very little about a wide variety of topics,” the journalist and humorist Dave Barry once quipped. “That’s how we stay objective.” That also may explain why we journos have largely failed to notice one of the biggest developments in modern history: the looming demise of our own profession.

The news business, that beacon of truth and astonishment, has been hit so hard by political, economic and technological change that it may soon be history. In the past two decades, according to the Medill School of Journalism’s latest “State of Local News Report,” the number of newspapers in the U.S. has fallen in the past two decades from 7,300 to 4,500 — only a few dozen of which still publish seven days a week. Meanwhile, newspaper staffs have dwindled from about 370,000 to 90,000.

Medill also reports that at least 1,500 U.S. counties are home to only a single journalistic outlet, print or broadcast. Several studies show that these “news deserts” typically suffer below-average rates of voting and other citizen involvement, as well as higher levels of corruption and partisan division.

Magazines have also taken a hit. Advertising and circulation have been dropping for decades. Hundreds of titles have closed. Some new ones have opened, but these tend to be specialized periodicals with tiny circulations. The golden age of mass-circulation magazines is over.

Consider the case of Time. When I joined it in the late 1960s, the newsmagazine was selling more than 4 million copies a week. My editors valued first-hand reporting so highly that they maintained dozens of bureaus around the world. Time is still around, but it has lost three-quarters of its print circulation, closed all but a few of those bureaus and now publishes only every other week.

Broadcast news has suffered only slightly less. The major commercial TV networks’ morning and evening news shows have seen their audiences shrink by nearly half over the past decade. CBS has been taken over by an oligarch friendly to President Trump, and CNN is about to be. The President has also cut federal funding for the public broadcasters PBS and NPR.

What caused the mainstream-media decline? Several things: free online content, social media, smartphones, classified ads moving to Craigslist and other online sites, display ads fleeing to websites and direct marketing. And, perhaps most of all, a rising tide of apathy resulting from the surfeit of competition for our attention.

A Reuters Institute report last year found that interest in current events fell at least 20% for all age groups over the past decade. A 2023 Pew Institute study found that most Americans now get the bulk of their news online — as many as one-third of them from a single social media site, TikTok.

Not surprisingly, the traditional news outlets that do survive are going digital themselves. Almost all newspapers and magazines now have websites. Profit margins for online subscriptions and advertising are far slimmer than for print, but publishers feel they have no choice. Some publications — including Glamour magazine and the respected daily Christian Science Monitor — have gone almost completely digital.

This shift from traditional to electronic media has also blurred the lines between fact and opinion, truth and disinformation. Many online news platforms and, especially, social media sites are run by partisan “influencers” instead of professional journalists and, too often, bristle with rumors and conspiracy theories.

Those flaws are part of online media’s appeal. You can easily find a site that confirms your biases, assuages your doubts and, above all, holds your attention. Many of these let you participate in the discussion and thus become part of a like-minded community, safely insulated from contrary views.

Of course, most Americans probably do understand the difference between fact and opinion, even though they sometimes lack sufficient information to tell the two apart — and aren’t even aware of that deficit. Many people avoid reliable sources of news because of the now popular suspicion that the “mainstream” media serve vested interests or even a “deep state.” Most American journalists would scoff at such an idea. If anything, they and even their bosses consider themselves professional skeptics with a soft spot for the “little guy.”

Rising public skepticism may explain why 94% of respondents told Pew Research this year that it’s important to “do your own research” in order to ascertain the truth. For most people, that means consulting reliable sources like major news providers, specialized professional journals and nonpartisan polling organizations. Yet more than a third of people surveyed by Pew said discussions with friends and family also count as research. That may be good for social cohesion, but it’s a rocky path to the truth.

Skepticism and debate are healthy in a democracy, but a citizenry that isn’t working from a common view of reality is headed for trouble. Fortunately, there are things we can do to address the problem. Among them:

— Patronize print, broadcast and online news outfits staffed by professional journalists and aimed at audiences from across the political spectrum.

— Help support reliable, non-partisan sources of information — many of which have converted to non-profit, donor-supported status. Also, those that are peer- and community-reviewed, like Wikipedia. And, of course, journalism education programs.

— Encourage high schools to offer courses in media literacy to help young people spot bias and misinformation.

— Don’t believe everything you read, especially online. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t.

Democracy has never relied on citizens knowing everything. It does depend on enough people caring enough to know something. Also, on journalists who, as Dave Barry puts it, know a little bit about everything — and are committed to finding out the rest.