Comment Re:'trusted civic leaders'? (Score 1) 36
What 'trusted civic leaders'?
The ones that the writers of the piece liked.
There's a continuing narrative that we hate journalists because of "malign influence" or some bullshit. That people are rubes, easily manipulated, and if political leaders would just take charge and prevent the "wrong" media, people would love journalists, politicians, etc. But people came by their distrust honestly. For much of my adult life, journalists have talked down to their audience (when it was a mass audience, anyway, before it fractured into pieces). I still remember Peter Jennings, in 1994, sourly lecturing viewers on how they voted the wrong way. The tone was very much Just what do you people think you're doing, anyway?.
Trust in these institutions is gone, and probably will never return in my lifetime. And it's entirely the fault of the people in those institutions. No one else.