In a way, it is a bit of an oddity that there has been trust in journalism in recent decades - some individual acts like publishing whistleblower accounts or corruption have lead to an outsized perception of it being for the public good.
Meanwhile, we have seen again and again - particularly in Murdoch owned properties - that the interests of commercial media do not align with what we consider the common good; ie
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_controversies
Yet we do nothing about it in particular (Australia and the US). Then we end up back here, wondering why groups in the electorate have wildly different perceptions
> have lead to an outsized perception of it being for the public good.
Exactly!
> Yet we do nothing about it in particular (Australia and the US).
Right.
First step: getting the public to know what the role of the Fourth Estate is in a democracy.
Second step: getting the public to know that they currently live in absurd infotainment landscape, getting them to understand how their media works.
Third step: getting the public to understand the importance of democracy.
Fourth step: holding media outlets accountable for misinformation.
The big danger for those in the know is that they get cynical. Then you have recreated the Soviet/Putin ecosystem, and the oligarchs have free reign. America is inching far closer to that, but in the mind of Americans "this can't happen here".