New York Times columnist Bret Stephens:
I worry that we — the news media in general — let ourselves off the hook a little too easily in explaining why the floor is falling out from under our business. Yes, the internet is part of the story. So is a general decline in public literacy.
But there's also the issue of trust and credibility. Even my liberal friends complain that some of the coverage they encounter, especially about culture, tilts so far left that it manages to leave them simultaneously bored and outraged. The plague of ideologically loaded adjectives is another big problem, as is reporting that too often is just opinion writing masked in quotes from experts. I can't remember the last time I read a sympathetic story about, say, what it means to run a small business in the teeth of well-meaning but foolish regulations (though I'm sure someone will be able to dig up a few examples). The news business will recover when it makes a much greater effort to understand and empathize with the lives and attitudes of people whose political and cultural outlooks we rarely share.
