> the "single most important factor" in media distrust was "the horrible coverage" in the run-up to the Iraq war and "the disastrous media coverage in the years after 9/11,"
This is certainly true of my own experience. I am surprised to see it being pointed out so plainly in what appears to be a relatively mainstream sort of news outlet.
I'm no expert but the news was a big part of causing American fervor when we started wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were united in a very unique way after the attacks and the news took advantage of that to drum up war support. We went to war with Iraq that literally had nothing to do with it. Wild when you think about it. I was young at the time and even I was calling for their country to be nuked. News 24/7 talking about the invasions.
Basically all of the major news companies took the Bush administration at face value and parroted whatever they were told to say in order to sell the US on attacking Iraq. Then shortly afterwards, it came out that Bush, Cheney, and co. had completely lied to the American people and fabricated a false justification for an unnecessary war that ended up killing thousands of innocent civilians burning trillions of dollars.
I was in college then, and remember thinking that there was a disturbing disconnect between what the news was reporting and what any third party sources were able to verify. The "yellow cake uranium" canard in particular, but anything related to the war on terror. And this was not Fox News, this was my college town's left-leaning NPR station.
The media consistently favored pro-war sources and ignored anti-war sources during the run up to the Iraq war. Publicly holding an anti-war opinion was a dangerous career move in the media at that time.
Journalists like Judith Miller of the New York Times were accused of being "stenographers" who reported whatever they were told by sources in the government without doing any independent verification, with many of the claims they reported later being shown to be false. They would report on things like Colin Powell's testimony to the UN on Iraq rather uncritically, when Colin Powell's own privately stated opinion of the draft of his speech was, "This is bullshit".
The effect of this was that the US public was misinformed about the role of Iraq in terrorism and the 9/11 attacks, as shown by surveys where a majority of the public would get the facts wrong about basic questions surrounding Iraq and 9/11, and both the public and politicians supported the war more than they would have if there was a more balanced debate in the media.
The argument is, basically, "If the US public knew the truth, they wouldn't have approved of going to war". Which of course is the case in most wars the US gets in - the role of the US media in the run up to a war is to make sure the public doesn't know the truth.
There was also zero consequences for both the horrible coverage and the lies. We have people like David "axis of evil" Frum holding prestigious positions at media companies. He should be pumping gas or flipping burgers somewhere.
This is certainly true of my own experience. I am surprised to see it being pointed out so plainly in what appears to be a relatively mainstream sort of news outlet.