Believe It: The Media's Credibility Headache Gets Worse

By PATRICK D. HEALY

SO many Americans apparently now see journalists as self-interested, careerist and unprofessional that perhaps it would make sense for media executives to call up another group of bosses who once faced fundamental questions about their product: the makers of Tylenol in the 1980's.

...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.