The article is here; here is the Introduction:
It was 1971 and Los Angeles Times editor Nick Williams had what he called a "terribly uneasy feeling." In a letter to one of the paper's Washington correspondents, he wrote of his suspicion that journalism had "lost credibility … with an alarming percentage of the people." If the plummet continued, Williams fretted, journalists will have "destroyed or weakened a keystone of our Constitution."
Williams's assessment was not entirely wrong. Polling data from 1971 confirmed that a dismal 18% of Americans had a "great deal of confidence" in the press.
But he also wasn't quite right. Far from undermining American government's democratic foundations, the press was likely shoring them up, having already entered what has been called its "Glory Days." This era was brought about, in part, by the press's performance of its watchdog role, exposing political corruption and government cover-ups. It was also brought about by something else: law. The Supreme Court and legislatures boosted the press by celebrating this watchdog role and granting it tools to enhance this work.
Today, 1971 feels familiar. Polls again register dreadfully low levels of trust in the media. "Terribly uneasy" may be a generous description of how journalists feel about the public's perception of them and the press's ability to continue playing its democratic role.
