Why Trust in the News Is Collapsing — A Biblical Perspective
Surveys show just shy of one third of Americans trust the news media, a stark collapse from the more than 70 percent who once believed reporters were fair and honest. That falloff matters because a healthy republic depends on a press people trust to tell truth, not preach. This is not just nostalgia — it is a warning light flashing red.
Sure, decentralization and social media splinter the audience and amplify noise, but that only scratches the surface. The deeper rot, many say, is motivation — why people go into journalism and what they think their job should be. When mission flips from reporting to reshaping, the product changes and so does trust.
Veteran investigative reporter Lee Strobel, who made his name at the Chicago Tribune before becoming a Christian, recently spoke about this shift on CBN’s “Faith in Culture” Podcast and blamed motive drift for much of the erosion. He argues the vocation has shifted from witness to crusade, and that shift distorts facts and fractures confidence in the news. His warning deserves sober attention from believers and nonbelievers alike.
“It saddens me so much,” Strobel said, and he draws on personal memory of being “trained to tell both sides of the story” because his “job was to report the news.” That training grounded reporters in fairness and restraint, making journalism a kind of civic ministry even when the journalist did not share the subject’s convictions. Losing that ethic is not merely a professional loss; it is a loss for the soul of public discourse.
When Strobel asks journalism students today why they are pursuing careers in news media, Strobel said he often hears they “want to change the world.” Aspiration is noble, but changing the world by shaping every headline is a different calling than reporting what happened. The risk is a newsroom that preaches and polices rather than observes and informs.
“That wasn’t our motivation, and that was not our role,” he said, describing the older mindset of reporters, and he adds plainly, “Our role was to report the news and tell both sides.” That posture made readers the ultimate judges, not the journalists. It allowed for honest disagreement without declaring one side illegitimate in the public square.
Strobel, known for “The Case for Christ,” remembers his years as a legal reporter for the Chicago Tribune when he was an atheist and openly pro-abortion. He even admits to helping arrange an abortion for a woman while he was in college, a candid fact that illustrates how personal life can diverge from professional practice. His transformation to a biblical worldview now frames his critique of modern media.
“I wrote a million articles about court cases involving abortion and, guess what?” he asked rhetorically. “If you read any of those articles, you would not be able to tell where I stood on the issue, because I told both sides. And I quoted good people on both sides.”
“And I tried not to skew the story one way or the other. That was the approach we took to the news.” Those sentences read like a code of conduct, one that elevated facts over advocacy. Where that discipline vanishes, journalism becomes a sermon or a weapon, and readers catch on fast.
Now a Christian who holds to a biblical pro-life ethic, Strobel worries about the near absence of faithful Christians in many newsrooms. That absence matters not because reporters must all think alike, but because a diversity that includes believers helps guard against cultural blind spots. When whole worldviews are missing, coverage narrows and trust erodes.
He also says the journalism industry at large seems “to have lost this value of seeking objectivity and trying to tell both sides,” a trend that alarms him. If reporters begin with advocacy instead of evidence, the newsroom stops being a forum for truth-seeking. That turns the press from a pillar into a platform.
“Our First Amendment is there because — it is our First Amendment because of how important it is,” he said. A free press was meant to serve the republic by checking power and informing citizens, not by substituting partisan judgment for sober reporting. When that function fails, the whole political ecosystem weakens.
We talked with Strobel about so much more on the “Faith in Culture” Podcast. Listen now:
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