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Welcome to another turn of The Sonic Wheel
I’m Christopher Howell
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An October 2025 poll by Gallop found that confidence in the mass media is historically low. Only 28 percent of Americans have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in newspapers, radio or TV to report the news fully, accurately or fairly. Republicans polled had much lower confidence in media then democrats and younger people were less trusting then older people. A Pew Research Center survey from last October had similar findings.
There’s a lot reasons for this. The internet has become an outrage machine where the biggest untruth is shared widely while any correction comes too late and gets buried in the weeds. Unscrupulous people and groups now claim they’re journalists. Politicians, while never truly trustworthy, tell the most outrageous and easily provable lies with impunity. AI let’s anyone with no technical skill spin up a fiction complete with supporting and convincing photographs. The prime motivation of for-profit news outlets is to no longer serve their audiences with trustworthy news. And maybe people today are just more partisan and more skeptical. Misinformation and disinformation is everywhere.
Trust is a the coin of the realm to an ethical media organization. Every good newspaper, TV newsroom, radio news station and now podcast or internet news outlet has a code of ethics that is strictly enforced. Strictly enforced. The Society of Professional Journalists (or SPJ) has a code of ethics that is followed by many news organizations or it’s used as a template to form custom ethics codes to serve an outlet’s specific needs.
I’ve read a number of ethics codes but I’m really fond of this list of five core principals of ethical journalism from the Ethical Journalism Network based in England. Here’s Honorary President and former Director Aidan White --
(Cut from Aidan White)
That was Honorary President of the Ethical Journalism Network Aidan White.
Journalists and the profession of journalism have taken a beating in the last 10 years -- or longer. According to a February 2026 report by the Committee to Protect Journalists 129 members of the press were killed in 2025. That’s a record -- more then in any other year of the past 30 years data has been collected. Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all press killings in both 2025 and 2024, many of those were targeted killings. Journalists are routinely killed for simply trying to gather facts and report what they’ve found. In 2023 two journalists were killed in the United States while on the job.
I just watched a 2003 movie called Shattered Glass about journalist Stephen Glass and his scandal at the magazine “The New Republic”. Forbes started questioning the facts of some of Glass’s articles. It turns out he had completely or partially fabricated 27 out of 41 published stories. Glass was fired and never worked in journalism again. In fact, he attended law school, passed the bar but was not granted a law license because of his fabricated stories. I point this out to demonstrate how seriously good news outlets take ethics and to make you think about politicians and other professions with no such codes.
There’s a difference between journalism and news outlets. I’ve come to see for-profit news outlets like the New York Times and most network TV news as mostly serving their shareholders and not you. The Washington Post and CBS, both owned by a billionaires, appear to be serving the oligarch class and not you. Facebook, owned by another billionaire, is a horrible place to find your news. Think of the motivations behind each news outlet. Be vigilant for fabricated news and click bait. Look out for AI generated news. Look out for people with an axe to grind. Be a smart, skeptical news consumer.
I don’t know how to restore the public’s trust in mass media. Many outlets don’t deserve to be trusted. NPR and ProPublica rank high on my personal list because they’re non-profit. When you remove the profit motive there’s greater trust.
Journalists get things wrong. Journalists aren’t perfect. Doctors and engineers and other professionals also make mistakes. But unlike many professions, good journalists are trying to be fair and thorough and accurate. I’m tired of hearing people who have zero knowledge about the profession of journalism making wild claims and accusations with no proof. Seriously, screw those people.
Be aware that good journalists are operating by an enforceable code of ethics and bad journalists do not. I urge you to go read the SPJ Code of Ethics and think about the news you see, read and listen to.
I’m including links to the reports and Aiden White that I’ve referenced in the transcript of today’s episode on my website at sonicwheel.wordpress.com.
Music bed up
That’s it for this spin of The Sonic Wheel
I’m Christopher Howell
Music bed down
Links referenced in today's episode
https://news.gallup.com/poll/695762/trust-media-new-low.aspx
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/29/how-americans-trust-in-information-from-news-organizations-and-social-media-sites-has-changed-over-time/
https://www.spj.org/spj-code-of-ethics/
https://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/
https://youtu.be/uNidQHk5SZs
https://cpj.org/special-reports/record-129-press-members-killed-in-2025-israel-responsible-for-2-of-3-of-deaths/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shattered_Glass_(film)
Credits:
Ethics word cloud by Teodoraturovic: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
Music by Radio Direct
Logo by Snehanshu Dharmadhikari on Unsplash