This NYT piece talks about the U.S. media's credibility problem, and says Tylenol -- which had to deal with a cyanide poisoning crisis 20 years ago -- had it easy by comparison.

Some excerpts:

Compared with the news media outlets, Tylenol may have had it easy. It would be hard for the media to pitch itself as a innocent victim of its own shortcomings. And though journalists like to think of themselves as guardians of the public trust, too, opinion polls for at least two decades have shown declining faith in print and television news. Reassuring the public that these products are dependable, in turn, has proved frustratingly elusive.

Is it even possible for such an unwieldy industry to regain a healthy measure of public trust?

It may have seemed possible in the period of national fellowship after 9/11, but the prospects are doubted by image-shapers like Mr. Burson, pollsters and others.

"With so many media players and gatekeepers today, and the assaults on the media from people in power, the best each organization can do is try to improve its own credibility," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "But turning around the positive ratings for the press as a whole will be challenging."

Almost like clockwork, each new month seems to usher in a new controversy over journalistic competence or integrity - the latest being the retracted May 9 article in Newsweek, about a report that American interrogators flushed a Koran down the toilet, that has been linked by the White House to at least 17 deaths during anti-American protests that followed.

I've written on the Newsweek/Koran case elsewhere on this blog, and right away, my feelings about the credibility of this story turn dark and dreary when I read something like that.

Of course the White House is going to link it to deaths -- they'll do anything to dodge responsibility. As the Toronto Star's Haroon Siddiqui put it: "It is (Bush's) policies, not a Newsweek item on the desecration of the holy book at Guantanamo Bay, that sparked the anti-U.S. protests that killed 17 people. What the magazine reported, albeit sloppily, is not new."

Anyways, writer Patrick D. Healey goes on to list evidence of the U.S. media's credibility problem:

• In the post-Watergate 1970s, 25 to 30 per cent of Americans told the Harris Poll they had a great deal of confidence in the press; currently that is down to about 12 per cent.
• A 2003 Pew study found 66 per cent of Americans thinking the news is slanted, compared to 53 per cent in 1985.
• 32 per cent of respondents in that study said the news media was immoral, compared to 13 per cent in 1985.
• Pew asked respondents if they thought the U.S. press was being too critical of the U.S.; 46 per cent said yes, 48 per cent said no.
• Pew's Trends 2005 report had 45 per cent of Americans claiming they believed little or nothing of what was in their newspapers, compared to 16 per cent two decades ago.

More from Healy:

A media makeover today faces obstacles that Tylenol did not have to confront. Scrutiny is intense. The Internet amplifies professional sins, and spreads the word quickly. And when a news organization confesses its shortcomings, it only draws more attention. Also, there is no unified front - no single standard of professionalism, no system of credentials. So rebuilding credibility is mostly a task shouldered network to network, publication to publication.

This is where we need to assess what makes for a credible news organization. Look at this chart from a June 2004 Pew Research Center for the People and the Press study:

As you can see from the chart on the left, Fox News -- the most highly partisan cable news station in the United States -- grew in credibility amongst Republicans from 2000 to 2004, going from 26 to 29 per cent.

Not a great leap. And when you compare Fox to CNN amongst Democrats, Democrats put way more faith in CNN (45 per cent in '04) than Republicans do to Fox (29 per cent in '04).

But scan that chart closely, and almost everyone else saw their credibility erode amongst Republicans and Democrats alike. Fox was the only one to show growth.

Yet Fox propagandizes, if not actually lies.

What's the lesson in that? To be considered credible, reflect your audience's biases back to them?

The current controversy is over anonymous sources. The Newsweek/Koran debacle led to Newsweek editor in chief Richard Smith announcing the following in its May 30 issue:

When information provided by a source wishing to remain anonymous is essential to a sensitive story—alleging misconduct or reflecting a highly contentious point of view, for example—we pledge a renewed effort to seek a second independent source or other corroborating evidence. When the pursuit of the public interest requires the use of a single confidential source in such a story, we will attempt to provide the comment and the context to the subject of the story in advance of publication for confirmation, denial or correction. Tacit affirmation, by anyone, no matter how highly placed or apparently knowledgeable, will not qualify as a secondary source.

That's a good step.

But another step that's required is intellectually rigorous journalism.

News junkies might remember the killings of four RCMP officers near Mayerthorpe, Alta. in March. The New York Times did a story trying to link that event to the growing violence in the B.C. Bud trade (Mayerthorpe is well over 1,200 km from the heart of B.C. Bud country). I blogged on the inadequacies of that story and carried some further analysis from my friend B.C. journalist Deborah Jones.

So I got up on my hind legs and barked. Job well done!, I think to myself.

But then the Guardian duplicated the story (obviously the fools don't read my blog). I blogged about that under the heading Those stupid pinheads at the Guardian -- make that a stupid pinhead.

The Guardian actually wrote this: "About a month ago four officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were shot dead when they stumbled on a BC Bud-growing operation - the most Mounties lost in one day since the middle of the 19th century."

Aghast, I wrote an e-mail to The Guardian's readers' editor -- and never got a response. Nor did I see a correction (the NYT printed a correction about some of its misinformation). I read The Guardian less now, and believe less of what I do read.

That unwillingness to own up to mistakes is, to me, a bigger credibility issue than using anonymous sources.

But credibility is a huge and complex matrix. There are a host of things that can impact on credibility, and the matrix is slightly different for every person.

 Another question for another thread is this: Does credibility impact on readership? It did for me in The Guardian's case, but Healy notes some political partisan who are highly critical of the MSM are also avid readers of the NYT.

Maybe therein is a silver lining: if the people who distrust you the most are also many of your most devoted customers, perhaps survival is assured. They have accepted flaws as part of the bargain of following the news.