Certain news outlets make their missions clear right from the masthead. “Democracy dies in darkness,” warns the Washington Post. “Without fear or favor,” declares the New York Times. The Wall Street Journal tells readers, “It’s your business.”

Not all news organizations have mottos like this, but they serve as reminders of journalism’s primary purpose. Still, trust in media has fallen to its lowest point in decades. A recent Gallup poll shows that only 28% of Americans trust media. The institutions once relied on to help the public understand the world beyond their own perspective now struggle to convince people that they are telling the truth at all. 

But public distrust is often based on misunderstanding. As Matthew Powers, co-director of the Center for Journalism, Media, and Democracy (CJMD) at the University of Washington notes, when people are asked whether they trust “the media,” they may be thinking about the New York Times, Fox News, or even social media influencers.

“People don’t make the distinctions,” Powers, who co-authored the book “The Journalist’s Predicament: Difficult Choices in a Declining Profession,” said. “The news outlets that have the highest level of trust are local news media…they’re also the ones that have the biggest economic problems.”

This evolving tension—the promise of journalism and the erosion of faith in it—poses a serious challenge for both journalism and democratic life. But it also raises an important question: What are journalists for, and how can they convince people of that purpose?

Journalism’s Democratic Purpose Still Stands

Journalism informs people about decisions made in their name and with their tax dollars, policies that impact communities and the country, issues that shape the future, and provides information that educates. A healthy democracy relies on an informed public, and journalism is one of the mechanisms that makes broad civic understanding possible.

Aside from disseminating information, news organizations also have also built a reputation for holding powerful people and institutions accountable. Journalists expose wrongdoing, encourage institutions to act ethically, and ensure that those who wield influence do not do so unchecked. In the United States, this watchdog function is not just a part of the industry⁠, rather, it’s protected as a fundamental right. The First Amendment enshrines freedom of the press as essential to the nation’s system of checks and balances, recognizing that democracy cannot function when information is controlled, concealed, or manipulated.

Journalism also serves as a space for dialogue, debate, and uplifting of diverse perspectives. It’s a platform not just for those who have power but also for those who don’t⁠—those communities that have been historically underserved by the country and its media industry. Through this function, journalism shapes a shared understanding of reality, built by a collection of voices. 

Yet Powers emphasized that journalism also serves another facet of democracy: the ability to live a meaningful life. Even without the dominance it held in the past, journalism still plays a role in terms of the fabric of what people are able to talk about, enabling people to use a wide range of stories to talk about deeper issues.

One recent example is the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle “Jeans/Genes” ad that, according to Vox, “sure got people talking.” Journalism’s role in this moment was essentially to break down why a pop-culture flare-up turned into a deeper public conversation, and to take what could have been dismissed as “just an ad” and reveal why it struck such a nerve. 

Reporters didn’t just cover the ad’s backlash; they explained why the language around “genes” carries a long history tied to eugenics, racial hierarchies, and beauty standards, bringing in experts in race, media studies, and advertising to articulate how racial signifiers and desirability politics work, perspectives the public might not have encountered otherwise.

Hitting at an issue closer to home, the disappearance of local journalism is more consequential than people realize. In a 2025 article published by the Columbia Journalism Review, Brad. N. Greenwood reports new empirical research highlighting that when major local newspapers shut down, federal corruption charges, indicted defendants, and cases filed all sharply rise, about seven percent across each measure. The disappearance of robust local journalism is thus correlated with measurable increases in corruption. When the authors used a difference-in-differences analysis across 65 U.S. newspaper closures (and a parallel study in Brazil), the authors found a consistent pattern: once a local newspaper disappears, corruption grows, and online outlets do not meaningfully offset the loss.

Why People Actually Read the News

Journalism has been useful for providing an objective view on the world; objectivity was the golden rule. It still is⁠—but while journalists and scholars continue their longstanding debate about objectivity, partisan news organizations grow in popularity.

Many motivations for consuming news fail to align to the civic ideal of objectivity that journalists hold. People read the news not necessarily for a three-sixty perspective on stories, but for “currency of conversation,” or to “seem informed,” or simply because it’s a morning habit that pairs nicely with a cup of coffee, as Powers put it. Others read for research, to satisfy their curiosity, to challenge themselves, or to learn something new.

“Our system is set up to be governed by and for the people,” Adrienne Russell, co-director of the CJMD, said. “Journalists ideally play a crucial role in helping people understand the world around them and each other so they can govern well.”

In this sense, journalism’s value lies not in resolving every issue it identifies but in helping people make meaning in a world of uncertainty⁠—in giving them stories, language, and information to recognize the forces shaping their lives and to navigate public life with greater clarity and confidence.

A Democratic Vocation, Not a Lucrative One

Those who pursue journalism as a vocation do not necessarily do it for the salary but because it is made out to be exciting. It’s an opportunity to meet new and interesting people, and the job involves being out in the field, providing possibly once-in-a-lifetime experiences. And, being a journalist connects one to broader social values such as service to community. 

Powers compared journalism to other professions essential to democracy, like nursing and teaching. But despite the need, these jobs are not very lucrative and they all experience similar issues with recruitment and retention. It’s not that people don’t want these jobs, but the reality of working them isn’t as fulfilling as they are made out to be. Many enter the journalism field imagining they will write, meet people, and engage with communities. Instead, they often find themselves “sitting at a desk,” said Powers, “rewriting press releases under tight deadlines, navigating low pay, and watching others in similar fields like communications and public relations earn more money with better hours. Many leave because they often feel as if they can’t understand what they’re actually doing.”

Journalism’s weakening financial structure, combined with a public consuming news in ways that don’t line up with the traditional models, makes the profession even more vulnerable. Powers pointed out how people have more control over how and what they consume, whether it’s entertainment news on social media, sports news on television, or political news on the CNN app. 

Despite these challenges, journalism nonetheless serves a crucial role in a democratic society. However, even when it fulfills one of its most important functions, holding power accountable, the impact is rarely immediate and often the change journalists seek to provoke does not materialize at all.

Turning Reporting into Action

Powers pointed out how stories of journalism taking powerful people and institutions down are etched into the American mythos and influence the public’s understanding of how much journalism can actually accomplish. For example, the investigative reporting by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered the Nixon administration’s abuses of power and helped set in motion a chain of political accountability that remains iconic in American history. Known as Watergate, this result of investigative journalism inspired the movie All the President’s Men (which won 17 Academy Awards; 23 nominations total). 

Similarly, early twentieth-century muckrakers (“reform-minded” journalists) exposed corruption and corporate malfeasance through sensationalist publications, shaping public awareness and prompting reforms that transformed American society.

“And that’s the…idealized understanding,” Powers said. “Journalism points those things out so that others can take them up. I think one of the issues becomes what happens when that doesn’t transpire, and when you also have people who sort of occupy the media space who are more interested in defending their own partisan preferences than in holding people to account.”

The reality is that journalism cannot fix all issues and institutions on its own. It can identify problems, spotlight abuses, and provide the language and context people need to understand complex issues, but it cannot by itself uphold a democracy. Investigative journalism in particular creates incredible awareness of matters that would otherwise remain hidden, such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning piece by ProPublica “Friends of the Court,” which revealed that multiple controversial Supreme Court of the United States justices had accepted undisclosed travel, luxury gifts, and real‑estate transactions from billionaire donors. But awareness alone is not enough, because institutions must respond and enforce change. 

This limitation is all the more stark considering that those two associate justices identified in ProPublica’s piece, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, still serve on the Supreme Court today. Not only that, but the SCOTUS continues to issue rulings that expand executive power in ways that undermine the constitution, from enabling a sitting or former president to escape accountability for official acts to allowing immigration agents to resume “roving patrols” in the Los Angeles area by lifting a lower‑court injunction that had barred stops based on factors such as worksite location, language spoken, or ethnicity.

Russell, who wrote “The Mediated Climate: How Journalists, Big Tech and Activists are Vying for our Future,” also noted the broader context for public trust: “Trust in institutions of all sorts is at an all-time low because there has been a concerted effort by conservative political parties to erode trust in things like science, journalism, and government institutions. It is also eroding because, for a very long time, professional journalism privileges elite—or bureaucratically credible—points of view and thus ends up serving to maintain the status quo.”

Journalism: A Pillar of Democracy, Not Our Deus Ex Machina

This is not all to say that journalism is a lost cause. Just one example out of many comes from 2010, when now-Seattle-based journalist and media executive Emily Parkhurst authored a series in The Forecaster called “Children Held Down,” which investigated the overuse of restraints and seclusion in Maine schools. Her reporting prompted the formation of a work group dedicated to creating meaningful change and spurred Disability Rights Maine to advocate for stricter policies. These policies require that restraints and seclusion be used only in emergency situations after less intrusive interventions have failed, mandate detailed incident reporting, and ensure that quarterly and annual data is reviewed by school administrators and submitted to the Department of Education to track and reduce future use. 

The vocation of journalism matters because it stands at the intersection of public service and truth‑seeking. When it works well, journalism provides a bridge between what is hidden and what must be known; it allows citizens to engage with their society with greater clarity, and it holds power to account. But for democracy to thrive, journalism must coexist with robust institutions, informed citizens, and responsive governance. In other words, journalism is essential, not because it can single-handedly save democracy, but because without it, democracy is unable to perform one of its most important tasks: identifying the realities that demand collective attention and action.