CHAPTER 14Reporters, Readers, and the Pursuit of Trust
HAROLD EVANS, the respected former editor of the Sunday Times and The Times of London and then president and publisher of Random House, once said: “Readers trust their bodies to their doctors, their children to their teachers, but they open their morning newspaper like a virgin entering the sergeant’s mess.”
Polls abound showing widespread distrust of the press. Overcoming that and earning reader trust is a never-ending battle. We took pride in a Harris Poll in August 1969 that found The Wall Street Journal was the most trusted newspaper in America. Even so, there always were readers, as well as people we had written about, who complained we had been inaccurate or unfair or biased in our ...
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