Mainstream media faces a credibility crisis – my journalism research shows how the news can still serve the public

“The news media is the least trusted group among 10 U.S. civic and political institutions involved in the democratic process,” the polling firm Gallup concluded in a 2024 analysis.

Despite news organizations’ pledges to provide fact-based reporting, and ongoing investments to build trust, people across the political spectrum in the U.S. are unconvinced of mainstream media’s self-described credibility.

The category “mainstream media” refers to flagship national newspapers like The New York Times, cable news channels like CNN and Fox News and news networks like ABC or NBC and their local affiliates. Despite deepening partisan divides in the U.S, Pew Internet Research has found that this definition is consistent across Republicans and Democrats.

Mainstream media’s credibility has been diminishing for years. But the trend has attracted renewed attention from news leaders and analysts since the 2024 presidential election, when many outlets again misjudged the electoral chances of President-elect Donald Trump.

I am a professor of journalism and media, and I believe my research offers a way forward for journalism to build credibility: solidarity journalism.

What is solidarity journalism?

Solidarity, as I define it, is a commitment to people’s basic dignity that translates into action.

Since 2014, my academic research has focused on the role of solidarity in journalism that represents marginalized communities – like people who are homeless, face food insecurity or are the targets of violence. These are groups who cannot simply opt out of the conditions placing their survival and safety at stake.

Journalists who cover these populations and topics accurately, I find, approach their reporting in ways that set them apart from the majority of news coverage. Specifically, when reporting in solidarity, journalists use newsworthiness criteria, sourcing tactics and framing styles that are distinct from those typically used by mainstream media.

Few journalists, by the way, use the label of “solidarity” to describe their practices. Instead, my research shows, solidarity emerges in how some journalists do their reporting.

What is newsworthy?

The first question journalists are trained to ask themselves before proceeding is: “Is this news?” In other words, what makes a topic worth covering right now?

Journalists usually know their editors will be looking for a few simple criteria. A strong story pitch usually includes novelty and people with institutional power. It feels important when weighed against other events happening at the same time.

Often, a political leader’s comments are what make an issue newsworthy, such as when President Joe Biden apologized in October 2024 for the inhumane conditions in Native American boarding schools run by the U.S. federal government until the 1960s.

When reporting in solidarity, however, journalists find stories newsworthy because people’s basic survival and safety are at stake.

A story published by Outlier Media on March 8, 2023, illustrates this approach. Headlined “Detroit tenants are organizing and making bigger demands,” the piece focuses on tenants’ struggles for simple needs like functioning sewage systems, hot water and electricity.

The president may never issue an apology for a city neglecting its poorest residents. And journalists reporting in solidarity don’t wait for elite recognition. They believe that when people’s basic dignity is at risk, it’s a topic worth reporting.

Handling of sources

Sources are the people, institutions and data that journalists use to provide evidence in reporting.

In the worst cases, marginalized sources describe reporters as hostile, transactional and extractive. Such journalists “parachute in” to cover a big story and grab quotes and wrenching photos of tragedies. Then, they disappear as abruptly as they arrived.

Journalists reporting in solidarity do their jobs differently.

They show up on the scene of an unfolding issue not only for the story but for the people affected. They spend time listening to people experiencing the issue and return after a story has run to continue the conversation – particularly when the struggles persist.

Reframing the narrative

Framing in journalism refers to how a story is told. It isn’t possible for journalists to include every possible source or every aspect of an issue. Frames shape who and what fits into a story.

Commonly, news framing focuses on how officials define an issue.

Take, for example, an ABC7News story about homelessness from July 25, 2024. Headlined “Bay Area mayors respond to Gov. Newsom’s order to remove homeless encampments,” it is framed around how officials reacted to a mandate to remove homeless encampments from city streets – not on the residents of those camps.

Solidarity framing prioritizes the people who are living an issue that places their basic dignity at stake due to factors beyond personal circumstance or bad luck. Solidarity framing defines issues based on what people experiencing these struggles know – and know they need – through firsthand experience.

A solidarity framing of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order to remove homeless encampments sounds like this: “‘We gotta be somewhere’: Homeless Californians react to Newsom’s crackdown.”

This story, published in CalMatters on Aug. 12, 2024, accounts for what people affected by tent bans are experiencing firsthand. It illustrates the impossible situation facing people who have nowhere else to go.

In solidarity framing, official sources aren’t judge and jury. Instead, marginalized people’s direct accounts shape coverage of what they are going through.

True public service

My interviews and interactions with journalists since 2014 find that a subset of mainstream journalists quietly do solidarity reporting already. They tell grounded stories of marginalized people’s struggles and prioritize those firsthand accounts over the messaging promoted by people in power.

I believe this model should be central to how journalism envisions its purpose and public service. And I’m not alone.

Black people have for centuries called for more factual reporting that reflects their actual lives, because mainstream news has long criminalized and dehumanized their communities. Trans people have similarly called for more on-the-ground reporting as a way for journalism to improve its credibility.

Many other groups, from progressive activists to conservatives, have indicated that they would find a solidarity reporting approach more credible than current reporting practices.

Mainstream media “could do a way better job of bringing in … folks who are actually on the ground experiencing this in real time and who were fighting to stop this in the first place,” one social justice activist told me in 2023.

Conservatives, meanwhile, object to what they see as distorted coverage of their communities.

“There’s a lot of different kinds of conservatives, and they just lump them all together as the right-wing extremists,” said one conservative news reader in a study by the Center for Media Engagement.

Through solidarity practices, mainstream media has a chance to achieve what it has always claimed to contribute to society: truthful reporting based on what is happening on the ground, to real people, in real time – and with real impact.