The Joyful, Bloody Media Circus of Bringing Down Brian Williams

Every year, a new Gallup poll or university study comes out—here’s last year’s—that informs us that reporters and journalists are among the least-trusted professionals in the United States. It’s usually politicians, lawyers, car salespeople, those who work in advertising, and us. We always dutifully write about these studies with a rueful chuckle—but it’s not like we believe them.

You sort of have to emotionally discredit these studies if you’re a member of the media, if just to sustain any sort of self-respect whatsoever. Politicians, lawyers, salesmen, ad writers … those jobs serve many functions, but “truth” has always been a more-or-less incidental byproduct of them; if the truth happens to be on their side, that’s great, that makes their job easier, but truth isn’t the point of those jobs. The truth is, theoretically anyway, the point of working in media. The whole purpose of having journalists in the first place is to get to the truth of the world’s affairs. So, to realize that the country not only thinks you’re not great at this job, but in fact believes you to be unusually untrustworthy, even compared to a freaking car salesman, can be too demoralizing to truly engage with.