Does Trust Matter? - (Reuters Institute Global Journalism) by Efrat Nechushtai

About the Book

This book provides a fresh perspective by demonstrating how the desire to increase trust in the news can be weaponized against journalists.

Book Synopsis

Around the world, journalism is undergoing a crisis of legitimacy. Public confidence in the news is declining; populist leaders attack the media; and journalists are routinely harassed and threatened. Many journalists and scholars believe that building trust with audiences would help weather these storms. But what do journalists risk in their pursuit of trust?

This book provides a fresh perspective by demonstrating how the desire to increase trust in the news can be weaponized against journalists. Based on in-depth interviews with nearly one hundred journalists, Does Trust Matter? challenges widely held assumptions about audience feedback that leave the media vulnerable to manipulation. Efrat Nechushtai shows how concerns over distrust have been used to increase favorable coverage of illiberal movements. She documents how the quest for public approval has led journalists to legitimize antiscience claims in the United States, racialize crime reporting in Germany, and produce "patriotic" stories in Hungary and Israel, among other cases.

Does Trust Matter? offers timely insights into how journalists can build resilience against increasingly sophisticated attempts to undermine their work, including AI-powered influence campaigns and online propaganda. Valuable for scholars and practitioners alike, this book presents practical strategies that reporters, editors, and publishers can use to navigate today's challenging environment.

Review Quotes

This highly original and essential book challenges the conventional wisdom that restoring public trust should be journalism's top priority. Nechushtai convincingly shows that when journalists instead concentrate on their civic missions, they are better able to serve their audiences, even if--and in part because--they don't always please them.--Rodney Benson, lead author of How Media Ownership Matters

Does Trust Matter? asks the question that many of us would rather avoid: what happens if journalists are wrong that the public shares their commitment to the common good, holding power to account, and to liberal democracy? Nechushtai's provocative argument is a call to action: the battle to rebuild trust in journalism may be the wrong fight. Rather, the best defense against the rising tide of illiberalism is critical journalism guided by a sense of purpose.--Nik Usher, author of News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism

Lucid, thoughtful, and pathbreaking. Drawing on more than ninety eye-popping interviews with journalists in both the U.S. and Germany, Efrat Nechushtai analyzes how the efforts of news organizations to rebuild media trust through face-to-face contact with community members proved useless. Journalists should read this book, as should academics who study journalism--and anyone else who is interested in how good intentions can go badly astray.--Michael Schudson, author of Journalism: Why It Matters

Nechushtai has written a magisterial, thought-provoking analysis of the question of trust in journalism. Drawing from a rich set of interviews with journalists in several countries, she ably dissects the meanings of trust and the way newsrooms navigate the ambiguities of public opinion and credibility about press performance.--Silvio Waisbord, author of An Introduction to Journalism: Thinking Globally

About the Author

Efrat Nechushtai is an assistant professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University.