Constructive Journalism is important not only for the news industry but for democracy and for us all. More than any other profession, journalism is a filter between reality and the public’s perception of it. Editorial choices about which news to feature, what journalists ask, how their stories are, what to post, and what not to say, all have a huge impact on how others see themselves, each other, and the world they live in.

Please take a look at the following data retrieved from many global organizations that further confirm the need to rethink journalism:

• In recent years the Annual Research reports of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford (Digital News Report), record, among other things, the ways in which the relationship between journalism and the public is wearing away, including a drop in trust, a decline in news interest, and an increase in the avoidance of news and the polarization of the public. [Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2023]
• Edelman Trust Barometer: Edelman is a global communications company. For the past 22 years, it’s been publishing the “Trust Barometer”, an annual global survey of more than 36,000 respondents in 28 countries. The results are published each January covering a range of current and important social indicators of trust between business, media, government, and NGOs. For 2022 they predicted a world trapped in a vicious cycle of mistrust, fuelled by a growing lack of trust in the news media and the government. Through disinformation and division, as they point out, these two institutions continue the cycle and exploit it for commercial and political benefits. “Distrust is now the established characteristic of society”,as they phrase it, ranking it first among their 10 most important findings .
• Knight Foundation: They have been tracking the decline of trust in the news media since 2017. The long-term trend on this measure hit a record low in 2020 when the share of Americans with no confidence in the news media surpassed that of people with at least some confidence for the first time in 40 years. Furthermore, findings from the American Views 2020 report showed that Americans were “very concerned” about increasing political bias in news coverage and the perception that news organizations “push an agenda.” American Views 2022: Trust Media and Democracy
• Additionally, the annual study called “Perils of Perception” explores the gap between people’s perceptions and reality in more than 40 countries and 200,000 interviews. This unique analysis of misperceptions looks at why people around the world are so wrong about things like causes of death, climate change, the sex lives of young people, the number of migrants, overpopulation and more. As they indicate: “Perceptions are not reality: Things aren’t as bad as they seem”.
• Gapminder Institute: “Hardly anyone knows the basic global data!” they argue. Gapminder is an independent Swedish Foundation, free of political and religious affiliations, that fights devastating misconceptions about global progress by promoting a fact-based worldview. They identify systematic misconceptions about important global trends and use reliable data to develop understandable teaching materials to rid people of destructive ignorance.