Who Is This Job For?

Watching the news has become infuriating.  I have yet to find a proper way to describe the tension between a brick, my television screen and my good throwing-arm.

Our reality is not being reported on with accuracy or respect. Especially the communities of people who’ve been marginalized the most.

It is impossible for me to remain stoic while faced with intentional erasure of Black and Latino lives in the national immigration narrative. Even further, as a student set to enter this field after graduation, I am exhausted with the lack of attention to basic principles of journalism, let alone to basic principles of humanity.

We’ll expand on this research study soon, but sit with this thought as you read:

“Let us wonder whether it is desirable that marginalized community members trust journalists who systemically mis- and underrepresent their personal experience in the name of objectivity.”

Take a look at just the first month of 2026. Keith Porter, shot by an off-duty ICE agent while sitting on his porch, has received little airtime. Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two more people killed by ICE in Minneapolis, are notably the only victims of state violence that receive continuous coverage.

The repetition of “two people killed by ICE in 2026” blatantly contradicts upwards of 34 reported deaths in ICE custody. Public accounts of ICE leaving detainees in the woods with critical injuries. The amount of deaths is impossible to tally from this opaque federal government.

“Why would anyone trust a news organization that treats obvious truths as debatable?” wrote Press Watch editor Dan Froomkin, who founded the political journalism outlet in 2019 during Trump’s first presidential term.

He writes about Jeff Bezos, billionaire CEO of Amazon, saying "Bezos uses trust like a cudgel.” (That’s a big, heavy hammer) Bezos took sweeping cuts from the editorial staff, claiming to “move [washington post] up the trust scale”, after acquiring the publication in 2013 for $250 million.

Thirteen years to date, Bezos has slashed 1/3rd of the Washington Post staff in layoffs. Employees were told to “stay at home”- a difficult task for Lizzie Johnson, Washington Post foreign correspondent on the war in Ukraine. She is currently in the capital of Kyiv, living out of a car.

“I was just laid off by the Washington Post in the middle of a warzone.” Johnson writes in a post on X, “I have no words. I am devastated.”

Western journalism is corporate controlled. Six major media companies have total control over our access to information. Companies with wealthy editors and anchors who blend cathartic entertainment with dishonest reporting. The videos of Alex Pretti’s murder were shared millions of times in mere minutes. Yet it took six days for outlets to begin refuting DHS accounts of the shooting.

A journalist’s credibility is dependent on their sources. Tony Dokoupil, CBS evening news, proclaims that he ‘gets it’ when people say they can’t trust the media anymore. He said the legacy media loses trust “because we've taken into account the perspective of advocates…”

“We put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites,” said Dokoupil, “and not enough on you.” It shouldn’t need to be said, but the news needs to be informative. Average Americans like to hear from an expert, or a human rights worker, or an official–anyone credible.

That’s why I’ve compiled scholarly research on social relationships, human behavior, decision making and belief to write in Horseshoe Magazine. Diligence led me to an article from three authors on (phe·​nom·​e·​nol·​o·​gy) phenomenology, approaching the news trust crisis from the angle of complex human experience.

The authors take into account “the willingness to trust versus the decision to trust” separately. Deciding to trust a news organization over one's own understanding is challenging. The study finds that people rely on “common sense” to resolve problems, rather than be overwhelmed with new information.

Trust goes both ways. “People must trust that their understanding of journalists as providers of detached accounts is accurate before they can actually trust a journalist…” said researchers. The news needs to be held accountable for lying to the public, rather than pursuing truthfulness.

“The maintenance of journalist identities, organizations, and the news institution is a matter of power.”, said the study’s authors.

Journalists need to cut free from corporate puppeteering. Our responsibility rests with our ideals. We share a stake in the democracy that our reporting supports, even when challenged by the powers that be. People-focused reporting should be the standard, as universal as gravity.

A revolution in journalistic ethics will regain public trust. Actions speak louder than words, after all.