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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Does Trust Matter?: Why Journalists Need to Rethink the Relationship with Their Audience

Does Trust Matter?: Why Journalists Need to Rethink the Relationship with Their Audience

Nechushtai, Efrat

Paperback

Series: Reuters Institute Global Journalism

Writing InstructionGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 0231221096
ISBN13: 9780231221092
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: May 19 2026
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.66
Height: 0.58 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

Around the world, journalism is undergoing a crisis of legitimacy. Public confidence in the news is declining; populist leaders attack the media; and journalists are routinely harassed and threatened. Many journalists and scholars believe that building trust with audiences would help weather these storms. But what do journalists risk in their pursuit of trust?

This book provides a fresh perspective by demonstrating how the desire to increase trust in the news can be weaponized against journalists. Based on in-depth interviews with nearly one hundred journalists, Does Trust Matter? challenges widely held assumptions about audience feedback that leave the media vulnerable to manipulation. Efrat Nechushtai shows how concerns over distrust have been used to increase favorable coverage of illiberal movements. She documents how the quest for public approval has led journalists to legitimize antiscience claims in the United States, racialize crime reporting in Germany, and produce patriotic stories in Hungary and Israel, among other cases.

Does Trust Matter? offers timely insights into how journalists can build resilience against increasingly sophisticated attempts to undermine their work, including AI-powered influence campaigns and online propaganda. Valuable for scholars and practitioners alike, this book presents practical strategies that reporters, editors, and publishers can use to navigate today's challenging environment.

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