Trust #7: Amid the flood of negative political ads, many islands of trustworthy news

Thousands of independent news providers risk online attacks and physical violence to serve their communities

I’ve been writing about trust in the media for years. My particular interest has been the economic value of trustworthy news and information. People want information they can trust. They consume media they trust. They will even pay for media they trust.

Readers are desperate for credible, trustworthy media.

Look at the challenges they face:

A disproportionate number of us get our news from Google and Facebook, which collect reams of information about our inclinations and behavior and use it to feed us advertising – some of it reliable and straightforward, some of it not.
We’re bombarded with political advertising, often skewed to attack ads ranging from hard-to-assess claims about the other side to outright lies, like immigrants stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
In parts of the world with unstable or authoritarian regimes, governments move quickly to consolidate control of the media and foment the ‘big lie,’ which, heard often enough, starts to sound normal — “Everyone knows that.”
Why do leaders of military coups take over the big TV and radio stations and co-opt media influencers as one of their first orders of business? Because they can control the message, control the news that people have access to.
They can silence opponents and justify doing whatever they want. They may say they’re doing the people’s will while suppressing opposition or enriching themselves, or both.

There’s another story, though, about independent media. Here are two examples, and I’ll wrap up this post with more examples below.

Smart money is betting on local, trustworthy news

How publisher credibility creates economic value

Whoever controls the media, controls the reins of power

Ask yourself: Why do two of the 10 largest companies in the world generate most of their revenue from advertising? (We’re talking about Alphabet, parent of Google and YouTube, and Meta, parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.)

Maybe it’s because penetrating the hearts and minds of people has tremendous economic value to anybody selling anything. Are the advertising messages trustworthy? If manipulated product reviews are any indication, no, not always.

In the political world, advertising helps any politician or party define itself on its own terms. And often, those terms focus on “who is the enemy.” Why are you flooded lately with so much negative advertising on text messages, billboards, TV, radio, and even newspapers? Because it works. James Ball, writing in The Atlantic in June of 2023, predicted the inundation of advertising that we’re being subjected to during this most recent election cycle.

Where and how we get news

According to Pew Research’s 2024 study of Americans’ news consumption, “a large majority of U.S. adults (86%) say they at least sometimes get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet, including 57% who say they do so often.”

And how do they get news on those digital devices? “News websites or apps and search engines are the most common: About two-thirds of U.S. adults at least sometimes get news in each of these ways. A little more than half (54%) at least sometimes get news from social media, and 27% say the same about podcasts.”

It’s easy to create a news app or to game search optimization to “flood the zone,” as some media manipulators aspire to do, with disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda.

And flood the zone they have. The fact-checking newsletter Reality Check has just published a series of de-bunking posts that show how Russia, China, Iran, and their minions have automated blatant lies about both Democrat and Republican candidates. The political stability of the world’s biggest military and economic power is under attack.

The Big Lie

Big lies heard often enough get repeated by people who are barely tuned in to the public conversation. Then they sound normal — “Everyone knows that.”

In Russia, Vladimir Putin described the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as “a special military action.” And anyone who used the word “war” to describe it could be imprisoned or subject to severe reprisals — 20,000 so far, according to Amnesty International.

How do you spread the Big Lie? Enlist the help of profit-minded media companies dependent on advertising. They will push sensationalist content that provokes fear, anxiety, hatred — and the clicks that generate revenue.

Independent media and public trust

All of the above should make us all worried: Who can we trust? Should there be regulation of these big companies? There is abundant academic research and journalistic coverage of the regulatory issues. All of that focuses on what someone else should do, what the government should do, what the tech platforms should do, and so on.

Meanwhile, there are thousands of independent media around the world — independent, that is, of political and commercial influence — that are aiming to serve their communities with trustworthy news and information that people can act upon.

While major media around the world have been losing readers, advertisers, and public trust for the past two decades, a grass-roots movement of smaller media has been growing.

These small digital media aim to replace what has been lost — trustworthy journalism that serves the public interest. Project Oasis Media Directory maps more than 3,000 such media outlets in Europe, North America, and Latin America that produce this type of news.

I wrote about Project Oasis in August and detailed how it was financed and executed. SembraMedia.org, of which I am treasurer and a member of the executive committee, partnered with a number of organizations to produce the study.

Not waiting around

I feel little sympathy for the large media organizations that have collapsed in the last few years because they sought to serve advertisers and not readers. They tried to protect their business models and profits by cutting costs — mainly by laying off the people best equipped to produce trustworthy information that people would be willing to pay for. (I give many examples in “How not to finance a news startup.”).

Another notable example of media entrepreneurs taking action is the Media Development Investment Fund, which has invested in 152 media companies in 47 countries (graphic below.) Their mission: “MDIF provides debt and equity financing to help independent media build strong, viable businesses and safeguard their editorial independence” (their emphasis).

I should also mention the American Journalism Project, which has raised $175 million to support 49 local nonprofit news organizations.

You should take a look at The Fix Media, which includes at its heart the Kyiv Independent news organization in Ukraine. Its team has grown from 18 to 50 people since the war began, largely on the strength of donations from organizations and readers totaling €1.8 million ($1.9 million).

Meanwhile, The Fix and its media partners have raised an additional €4.8 million ($5.2 million) to support Ukrainian colleagues at home and abroad.

Or I could mention the 20 media organizations from 16 countries in Europe and the Americas which some colleagues and I studied for a paper, “Some viable models for digital public-interest journalism.”

It’s a public service, not a business

Publishing the news in print and over the air was a lucrative business before the internet. But the internet fractured the old monopoly that traditional media had of production and distribution. No news organization today can claim an “exclusive” for more than a few seconds.

If a story is of great public interest — public corruption, abuse of power, social injustice — other outlets will re-publish it. They may or may not give credit to the organization that dug up the facts. So there is no business advantage to being first. It’s a public service.

Three years ago, I began writing about “Reasons for Optimism about the News Business, in spite of everything you’ve heard.” I got up to Reason No. 12 before moving on. I had pretty much convinced myself. I hope I convinced others. And I keep seeing more evidence all the time.

Let me be clear. I’m not some starry-eyed, cockeyed optimist who can’t see the threat of all the negative trends in media. But pessimists just throw up their hands. “Nothing to be done.” Optimists get into action. You might not have been aware of how many there are. I keep seeing more all the time.