Half a century ago, most of the public said they trusted the news media. Today, most say they don’t. What happened to the power of the press?

By Louis Menand, January 30, 2023

When the Washington Post unveiled the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” on February 17, 2017, people in the news business made fun of it.

“Sounds like the next Batman movie,” the New York Times’ executive editor, Dean Baquet, said.

But it was already clear, less than a month into the Trump Administration, that destroying the credibility of the mainstream press was a White House priority, and that this would include an unabashed, and almost gleeful, policy of lying and denying.

The Post kept track of the lies. The paper calculated that by the end of his term, the President had lied 30,573 times.

Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item...

Source: When Americans Lost Faith in the News | The New Yorker