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Trust continues to fall in journalism around the nation, and CBS News President Wendy McMahon says the industry can’t ignore that any longer.
While speaking at the 2024 Giants of Broadcasting event earlier this week, McMahon shared that while the state of news media may be precarious, organizations and individuals must persist in their missions to provide crucial information for the American public.
“It’s also true that we can’t ignore the number of surveys that indicate a growing lack of trust in journalism, in what we do,” McMahon said. “Fact-based journalists are continually buffeted by purveyors of disinformation and misinformation. We are attacked, we are called fake news or worse.”
She added that the industry must block out the noise of those who have grown increasingly critical in recent years.
“We cannot define ourselves by those who look to dismiss what we do,” she said. “We need to stand firm for fact-based, objective journalism. This doesn’t mean that we don’t need to evolve, that we don’t need to constantly be listening to our viewers, listening to America,” McMahon said. “But we need to do so while upholding our values. I often talk about the need to need to retain and defend your ‘why’ while courageously exploring your ‘what’ and your ‘how.’”
The CBS News President added that it is important for networks to double down on the mission of journalism to combat the mistrust.
“Never before has the work of a journalist been more important,” Wendy McMahon said. “Never before has the work, the mission, the profession felt so precarious.”
Stop spreading government propaganda and report the news like Walter Cronkite did.
That will solve the problem.