Millions no longer trust the media because they believe it has stopped reporting the world and started fighting over it. Once seen as a public watchdog, much of the press is now viewed as partisan, corporate, selective, and detached from ordinary life.
The decline did not happen overnight. Years of sensational headlines, political bias, rushed reporting, opinion dressed as news, and endless outrage weakened public confidence. Many readers and viewers feel that media outlets do not inform them honestly, but steer them toward a preferred conclusion.
The internet made the problem worse. Traditional newspapers and broadcasters lost their position as gatekeepers. Social media, podcasts, YouTube channels, and alternative news platforms gave people other places to turn. Some of those spaces exposed real blind spots in mainstream coverage. Others spread rumour, conspiracy, and anger. Either way, the old media monopoly was broken.
Politics then turned distrust into a weapon. Populist leaders attacked journalists as enemies of the people and branded critical coverage as fake news. For supporters already suspicious of elites, this message felt convincing. If politicians, banks, universities, courts, and corporations could not be trusted, why should newspapers and broadcasters be any different?
Trust also collapsed because people now live in separate information worlds. Conservatives, liberals, moderates, activists, and conspiracy believers often consume entirely different versions of the same event. Each side believes its sources tell the truth while the other side is brainwashed. Without shared facts, public debate becomes almost impossible.
This crisis is central to The Politics of Rage: The Rise of the Far Right, And the Battle to Save Democracy by Seán Hogan. The book explores how media distrust, alternative platforms, social media algorithms, and political manipulation have helped fuel populism and democratic decline.
Seán Hogan shows that the collapse of trust in media is not only a journalism problem. It is a democracy problem. When citizens no longer believe anyone can tell the truth, they become vulnerable to whoever tells the most emotionally satisfying story.
The Politics of Rage is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why the media lost public trust, how that distrust is being exploited, and why restoring a shared reality may be one of democracy’s greatest challenges.
Find out in this essential read, available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FHBDWJD4/.