![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/218\/2022\/08\/chuck-todd-newspage-900.jpg\")
Todd said it’s becoming harder to tell the difference between politicians and journalists these days.<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n The program, sponsored by the Riley Institute at Furman and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, was titled \u201cAlternative Facts and Partisan Media: Missing Walter Cronkite.\u201d Todd also participated in a panel discussion after his talk that included Katrice Hardy, executive editor of The Greenville News<\/em>, and Bob Inglis, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives for South Carolina\u2019s 4th district.<\/p>\n Todd\u2019s comments ranged from his love of the Miami Hurricane football team (he grew up in Miami) to references to the HBO hit show, \u201cGame of Thrones,\u201d but he focused on the theme of the night: How did America arrive at this level of distrust in the media and how can it be fixed?<\/p>\n Todd said confidence in the media has been steadily eroding over the last several decades, especially as it becomes harder to tell the difference between politicians and journalists. Since the Kennedy administration, at least one member of each administration has become part of the media or a media member has joined the White House, Todd said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat has become the norm,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are people who go into TV news using it as a launching pad for going into office, and there are people who run for office hoping it leads to a talk show. This is messed up.\u201d<\/p>\n Todd stressed the importance of building a wall between the role of reporters as watchdogs and the role of politicians. \u201cAre we (journalists) the same watchdogs that we have pledged to be?\u201d<\/p>\n In the second part of the program, Todd, Katrice Hardy and Bob Inglis took questions from the audience.<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n Todd also said the age-old charge of media bias is not unfounded.\u00a0 \u201cThere is bias in the media,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are born with original bias, to borrow a phrase.\u201d\u00a0 It always plays a role, he added, and it\u2019s not always ideological.\u00a0 It can also be cultural, reflecting the journalist\u2019s experiences and environment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were more likely to do a story on the \u2018Dreamer\u2019 who might get deported than we were on the opioid addict looking for help in rural Missouri,\u201d Todd said, referring to the media who covered the 2016 presidential election. \u201cThink about how that fractures trust.\u201d<\/p>\n With the ease in mobilizing reporters, Todd said there\u2019s no excuse for not knowing what\u2019s happening in individual communities, which can help repair a broken trust. \u201cCan we prove to you we understand what\u2019s happening in your community?\u201d<\/p>\n Politicians have also exploited the cultural disconnect on the part of the media by saying \u201cit applies to politics far and wide, and it applies ideologically up and down on every single issue.\u201d He said politicians must be vested in wanting the press to be trusted.<\/p>\n \u201cSomeday, President Trump is going to want his people to believe what we report,\u201d Todd said. \u201cAnd he\u2019s going to regret that day when suddenly no one is believing what he wants them to believe. We don\u2019t want to go down that road.\u201d<\/p>\n So how do we fix the trust issue? Todd said that Americans, as voters and consumers of news and politics, must exercise the will to address the problem together.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the day, every election result is a reflection of us,\u201d he said. \u201cFor better or for worse, that election result reflected our country. So, everybody in this room has to take charge of this and say, \u2018I want to make this better.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Furman Politics and International Affairs Professor Danielle Vinson introduced part two of the series on \u201cMedia and Politics in a Post-Truth Era\u201d Thursday evening, she cited a Pew Research […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":17320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41689,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6858\/revisions\/41689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/218\/2022\/08\/chuck-todd-hardy-inglis-900.jpg\")