Two of America’s Most Respected Newspaper Icons Say Reader Lack of Trust is a Major Reason Why Western Circulation Numbers Are Down

Philip M. Stone June 6, 2005

When you have two such American newspaper personalities as Arthur Sulzberger, chairman of the New York Times, and Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today and the main driver behind what made the Gannett Company what it is today, both talking about a lack of trust by readers in American newspapers, supported by a new survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center saying that only 45% of Americans believe everything they read in a newspaper, then it goes a long way in explaining the malaise affecting newspapers in the West.

And US and European circulation declines become even more startling when compared with what the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) Press Trends Survey reports is happening in Asia  -- a 4.1% circulation increase in 2004. Advertising was no different -- global newspaper advertising revenues jumped 5.3% in 2004, and that was led by a 29% increase in China, but it gained only 4% in Europe and the US. Of the world’s top 100 daily circulation newspapers, three-quarters are published in Asia.

The report left unanswered why Asia newspaper readership is growing while in Europe and the US it is in decline. But Sulzberger and Neuharth, both in Korea for WAN’s annual convention, voiced similar concerns about the “trust” factor between American newspapers and their readers.

Neuharth, in his weekly USA Today column, noted, “Newspapers in Asia emphasize news. The volume of news exceeds the volume of advertising. In many US newspapers the reverse is true. …

“How to attract more readers by putting more news in the paper, with accuracy and fairness above all else, may be the best 400th anniversary gift for modern-day editors and publishers in North America and Europe from their Asian counterparts,” Neuharth concluded.

He said most newspapers in the US were reliable, but even newspapers like the New York Times and USA Today have had to apologize to their readers recently for printing false news.

Sulzberger told WAN delegates the various steps the Times were taking to regain reader trust. They include appointing a “standards” editor, cutting down on the use of anonymous sources, having editors write columns detailing how the newspaper works, publishing transcripts of interviews, using its web site to publish complete documents used in the print stories, and even helping with the development of anti-plagiarism software.

“I am convinced that our ultimate value proposition is our credibility.” He said.

Boosting the newspaper’s trust with its global audience is a major goal.

Neither man mentioned how “trust” might be a factor in China’s booming newspaper industry. Nor did they discuss how Internet penetration could have anything to do with readership levels.

"...our value proposition is our credibility"
Arthur Sulzberger

According to Internetworldstats.com 35.5% of Europeans have access to the Internet and in North America, including Canada, its up to 67.4% of the population. But in Asia, only 8.4% of the population is on the Internet. Newspaper readership would appear to be at its highest where Internet penetration is at its lowest, but that does not explain high and expanding readership levels in such countries as Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. Maybe there is something to the trust theory.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania has released a survey asking media people and people outside the industry the same questions, and its results were startling in how the media sees it self versus how the public sees the media.

For instance, 86% of journalists believe they get the facts rights in their stories, but only 45% of the general public believes that.  If a mistake is made only 3% of journalists believe it is covered up, whereas 41% of the public believe there is a cover up.

“Either the journalists and editors are out of touch with reality, or there is a communications problem,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the policy center.

That is not lost on the “working” media. Trust was the number one subject at the annual convention this weekend in Denver of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), a group that watches with even greater concern the credibility crisis between the media and its audience.

The problem was best summed up by Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University. He told the Denver Post, “The credibility crisis is real. The ability of the news organizations to be perceived as honest brokers of neutral information …is something that has been steadily diminishing.”

So it’s a bit odd that their keynote speaker was Dan Rather who gave up his CBS news anchor spot after the scandal involving un-authenticated documents he used in his US election report disparaging President Bush’s National Guard duty. On the other hand, maybe its good that one who has been through the wringer can tell others what to avoid.

So, while the newspaper industry is booming in Asia, it’s hard to find any good news for how it’s doing in the US. Except for this one gem: when it comes to rating journalists in comparison to lawyers, politicians and government officials, journalists still come out favorably ahead.

There may yet be hope!