Many readers of this report will remember Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Jack Anderson and many others of the great TV anchors, news reporters and investigative columnists who delivered news the public trusted. Those were the days of fact checkers and editors who demanded at least two sources before reports went to press.

Today, while 81 per cent of Americans believe the news is critical to the nation’s future, we get “information” that is often laced with personal opinion from many of the media. Except among publications such as The Wall Street Journal, there is little fact checking. Small wonder Americans believe 39 per cent of reports in newspapers, on TV or on the radio are misinformation — and that 65 per cent of news on social media is made up or can’t be verified as accurate.

How did this happen and what can we expect in the months and years ahead, a critical time for the US when the news we get will help shape decisions about our future? This report looks at those questions and offers some answers.

How media is produced and how we consume it continues to evolve in the second generation of the digitisation of the news business — The Wall Street Journal’s online edition turns 25 this year — and clear trends have emerged.

We all have access to far more information than ever, but it’s often mingled with opinion by some bad actors, and there seems to be less agreement than ever on what is a fact and what isn’t. This is a dangerous trend that exacerbates political polarisation. Coupled with this is a fragmentation of traditional sources of news and entertainment, leaving in its wake more choice but less trust.

There are solutions, including a rebirth of local news organisations and greater commitment to teaching media literacy, but to understand them we need to understand the origins and depth of the problem.

USA Today reporter Nathan Bomey nails it in a new book, Bridge Builders: Bringing People Together in a Polarized Age.

He writes: “Comprehensive, authoritative, nuanced news coverage is increasingly difficult to find in large part because local news outlets, which know their communities the best, have been crushed by the decline of print-advertising revenue and paid subscriptions.”

He’s right. Axios reports that more than 11,000 newsroom jobs were lost just in the first half of this year alone, almost as many as the recent high of 11,900 in 2018.

Bomey adds: “Their decline has national consequences. In the absence of strong, local outlets — which thrived on trusted personal relationships between journalists and the community — the attention of news consumers has shifted towards national outlets and often extremely partisan online communities that foster polarisation through social media. Plus, the news industry’s pivot towards emphasising reader metrics to maximise revenue has unfortunately led to more sensational headlines and less intricacy in many quarters. Consequently, readers and viewers have grown increasingly cynical about the news content they encounter.

“About six in ten Americans ‘think news organisations do not understand people like them,’ according to a Pew Research Centre poll conducted from February through March 2020. That includes 61 per cent of White people, 58 per cent of Black people and 55 per cent of Hispanic people.”

All this is an illustration of a significant change from 30 or so years ago, when most major newspapers and TV news operations strived for neutrality and just reporting facts. The lurch towards more coverage of politics coincided with a need to attract viewers and readers against increasing competition for their attention. Appealing to their political bent seemed a good idea. This was long true of European and South American newspapers: they were often aligned with political parties of the Left or Right, and you picked the one you agreed with.

But political alignment can lead down deep rabbit holes. To take a recent example, the January 6 demonstration/assault on the US Capitol. To one GOP congressman the crowd were peaceful tourists. To the FBI, which has arrested more than 400 of them, they were domestic terrorists. One’s view is certainly influenced by cable TV reporting; those who follow right-wing stations might agree with the congressman; those who don’t might agree with the FBI.

The problem is deepened by widespread dissemination of untruths in truthful clothing. The philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote a bestselling book in 2005 entitled On Bullshit. His work has been pursued in many academic linguistics departments, and his subject sometimes goes by the gentler name of gaslighting. This involves politicians (mostly) saying things they think will help them politically without caring if they are true or not, and not bothering to check. Our problem is that gaslighting thrives as never before when the lies are repeated on social media and cable TV outlets that didn’t exist in an earlier time.

The “democratisation” of media thanks to the internet has also created something of a free-for-all, giving everyone a voice, sometimes at the expense of clarity, and inviting gaslighting or shaky interpretations of everything from the 2020 election results to the efficacy of Covid vaccines.

Covid itself may have exacerbated the problem. With lockdowns causing many more people to remain glued to their computer and TV screens all day, conspiracies spread fast among the bored.

All this has led to much more personalisation and choice of people’s media consumption; not a bad thing in and of itself. But it has also led to massive distrust of gatekeepers, be they The New York Times or CNN, as dispassionate dispensers of truth. This in turn has caused some to declare: The Truth Is Unknowable.

Why did this happen?

Media ownership has both consolidated and fragmented at the same time. Corporations, including hedge funds in some cases, now control major sources of news and entertainment. These owners seek to monetise their investments by, first, attracting more eyeballs to view advertisements, which has always been the case, and, second, by employing fewer reporters and editors — cutting the very people who provide the content that is supposed to attract viewers and readers. Slanting and sensationalising the news is a common response to this self-induced Catch-22.

It doesn’t end there, either. There was a time when news editors would absolutely refuse to kill a story just because it would offend a major advertiser or hurt one of the publisher’s friends or tarnish a politician the editorial page supported. That kind of integrity was what built reader trust. Now, however, as many local papers reach a point of desperation for advertising revenues or get sold to national chains or bought by hedge funds, it is no longer certain that this old standard will apply. When the new owner doesn’t care about anything but the bottom line, editors who refuse to knuckle under aren’t likely to be around for long.

In the entertainment industry, specifically popular music, streaming services such as Spotify have all but erased artists’ earnings from recordings, forcing them to return to touring — or, when that avenue closed during the pandemic, compelling those who could to sell their catalogues of past songs for big sums.

Meanwhile, much lower barriers to entry in digital media have created TikTok and YouTube “stars” who command considerable followings. A few journalists have managed to charge people for their thoughts in blogs on websites such as Substack, but it remains to be seen if this is a viable solution to an increasingly uneven playing field.

As for the TV networks, they are increasingly squeezed by the more innovative and cash-flush streamers. This has led them to try to spawn new series off existing franchises, leading to a dizzying number of CSIs, FBIs and Chicago this and thats. Their colleagues in cable news — most notably MSNBC — are trying to appeal to younger audiences that get most of their news on their phones, with little success so far.

To make matters worse, the three major networks — now buried in conglomerates: ABC in Disney, CBS in Viacom, and NBC in Comcast — long ago lost audience to cable networks, which are in turn becoming victims of increasing cord-cutting as viewers turn to streaming services such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu and Disney+. This is mostly a problem for the legacy networks and for advertising agencies that find it increasingly difficult to accurately measure their audiences. It has also led to dizzying mergers, demergers and re-mergers of big players.

In just a single week in late May, Discovery moved to buy WarnerMedia, a conglomerate that owns everything from CNN to HBO to Warner Bros, and Amazon announced it is buying MGM, owner of the James Bond franchise among many others.

The world of print has been hardly immune from this merger/buyout trend. Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that was already one of the nation’s leading newspaper owners, has just purchased Tribune Publishing, which includes the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and several other important papers. That comes in the wake of the purchase in 2013 of The Washington Post by Jeff Bezos, the founding figure of Amazon and the world’s second-richest man, and the purchase in 2007 of The Wall Street Journal by Rupert Murdoch, the powerful media baron whose international holdings already included the New York Post.

What to do?

Here are some ways we can help get back to an era where facts matter and are accepted as such by most people.

• In areas that concern us directly, we owe it to colleagues, clients and customers to speak loudly and forcefully when we see disinformation spreading. It’s no longer true, if it ever was, that “Oh, it’ll just go away”

• Support organisations that conduct balanced, thorough investigations, such as ProPublica, and encourage teaching of critical assessment of news stories, such as the Media Literacy Project

• Consider truthfulness, as measured by respected fact-checking organisations, when making political donations or supporting candidates

Ironically, the Covid pandemic offers the media a chance to regain some if not all public trust. Factual reporting of the dangers of the disease helped to instil habits of handwashing, social distancing and mask wearing that experts say eventually mitigated the disease. Widespread coverage of vaccines and how to get them has helped to protect more than half of American adults, and the number is growing.

It’s going to take a long time to rebuild trust in the media. But it’s a start.

Recent Major Media Mergers

• Amazon plans to buy moviemaker MGM for $8.45 billion

• Discovery is buying WarnerMedia from ATT, which had acquired it in 2016

• Alden Global Capital is buying Tribune Publishing for $633 million

• Verizon is seeking permission to buy TracFone but also is selling ATT and Yahoo to private equity firms

• In 2018 Disney acquired 21st Century Fox’s TV and movie properties

•In 2017 Discovery acquired Scripps Networks’ Food, HGTV and Travel channels

• In 2012 Disney bought Lucasfilm, originators of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises

•In 2009 Comcast bought NBC Universal

•In 2005 Viacom bought CBS

• Robert Dilenschneider is the founder and principal of the Dilenschneider Group, which provides strategic advice and counsel to Fortune 500 companies, and leading families and individuals around the world