Whistleblowers Are Losing Trust in Journalism
Times have changed since the Watergate scandal and whistleblowers such as the anonymous “Deep Throat,” who revealed the details of Nixon and the Republican Party’s underhanded and illegal tactics against the Democratic Party to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Public trust in the media is declining around the world, and a new study indicates that whistleblowers are increasingly distrusting journalism as a whole.
The University of Georgia’s Dr. Karin Assmann, an assistant professor of journalism, interviewed 16 whistleblowers who have contacted journalists between the 1970s and 2010s, including Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower of the Pentagon Papers. In the interviews, she found that “whistleblowers were [initially] drawn to journalists because of the overlap between their own motives and their perception of journalists’ motives — keeping the powerful in check and advocating for the public interest,” but that each whistleblowers’ perception of the media in the time since they contacted major publications has changed along with public opinion.
Whistleblowers, who are news consumers themselves, described the media today as “corrupt, biased, politicized, self-serving, beholden to the government and neglectful of their sources.” The United States fell two places on Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) Press Freedom Index in 2022, and RSF says press freedom violations are “increasing at a troubling rate.”
“After four years of President Trump constantly denigrating the press, President Biden signaled his administration's desire to see the US reclaim its global status as a model from freedom of expression, thus reinstating regular White House and federal agency press briefings,” writes RSF. “Despite these efforts, many of the underlying, chronic issues impacting journalists remain unaddressed by the authorities – including the disappearance of local news, the polarisation of the media or the weakening of journalism and democracy caused by digital platforms and social networks.” Indeed, the media has seen a significant partisan divide both internally among journalists and newsrooms, as well as in the public eye: American distrust in the media is driven primarily by citizens who identify as conservative or Republican.
Many of the whistleblowers said they would try to release information on their own or else look for alternatives to working with journalists, due to a loss of trust in “source protection and accuracy, followed by a reporter’s expertise and willingness to listen.” One case in particular saw whistleblower Perry Fellwock, who revealed the existence of the NSA to the public under a pseudonym, named by a journalist against his will. In an interview with Gawker, Fellwock expressed his extreme distrust of journalists: "’If you go back to the Church Committee, you'll find that many, many of your colleagues worked for the intelligence agencies,’ [Fellwock said to journalist Adrian Chen.] ‘I believe that you're honest, but who knows about the people in your office? Who knows about your boss, what kind of deals he's doing?’"
Media’s role in American society is becoming less clear, and Assin concluded that this lack of clarity contributes to “[Whistleblower’s] expectations [being] increasingly difficult to meet in the U.S. media environment, where newsrooms cannot afford dedicated beat reporters with the expertise and resources necessary to be discovered and trusted by the next whistleblower as a reliable collaborator.” Until American journalists and newsrooms can be supported without relying on funding from partisan donors or corporate interests, this lack of trust and faith in the media and in journalism around the country is likely to get worse.
