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People Still Hate The Press: Where Is Walter Cronkite?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Members of the press nearly always place themselves above politicians, military officers, and even evangelists in their own minds. It is an odd decision, although it is at the core of how the news media defines itself. The point of view allows writers and broadcasters, and even bloggers to justify their work. They are superior. And, it is another way to rationalize their low pay.

Americans loathe the press which makes its place on its own pedestal hard to justify.

A new Gallup poll shows that “The 28% of Americans who express a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers and the 27% who say the same about television news still lag significantly behind the levels of trust seen through much of the 1990s and into 2003.” It is another oddity that people will only see the Gallup results if they see them published by news organizations.

The Gallup poll does not mention Andrew Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, or Bill O’Reilly. Maybe it shouldn’t. For all anyone knows The New York Times, TIME Magazine, and the CBS Evening News should be included in the “trust meter.” Certainly people think most media have agendas. Maybe its because many do and it is hard to tell the good guys from the bad.

Whatever the cause, it is a shame that Americans no longer think well of one of their most critical sources of intelligence.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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