The obsession with ‘trust’ must end

My prediction (or rather hope) for 2024 is that journalists will realise that ‘trust’ is a useless metric of their work. Ok, I am kidding. I have no expectation that the news media will cease its pointless obsession with trust surveys. It’s not only a distraction but actually harmful. As Noble Prize winner Maria Ressa has pointed out, authoritarian politicians and corporate giants love to highlight how surveys of trust regularly put journalists at or near the bottom of the league.