Most Trusted

I'm writing up a new intro for a "fake news" talk I'm giving in San Antonio last week. Two of my main interests are politics and online technologies. It's always fascinated me how news in general has become decentralized, and also custom tailored to the people watching it.

One of my earliest memories of being aware of news media was seeing Walter Cronkite on TV. I was reading about Cronkite's career, and I kept seeing he was called "The Most Trusted Man in America." That seems like an awfully lofty title to me, so I looked into that and found that it was based on an actual national survey, where people were asked who they trust the most. Cronkite won handily, in at least a couple of different years -- there was a poll in 1974 and another 1985. Admittedly, the number of options in the polls were somewhat limited, but still, the narrative of Cronkite as "most trusted" has persisted.

And I thought that was odd, because the question "Who is the most trusted person in America?" doesn't seem to even have any clear meaning in 2017. Back then, there were three major networks which ran nightly news; today we have thousands of websites that people follow and curate based on how much the sites say things they like to hear.

Still, I looked into this further, and found that a similar survey was done in 2013, and boy, are the results revealing. The most trusted man in America is... Tom Hanks.

Second is Sandra Bullock. From there the list goes:

3. Denzel Washington
4. Meryl Streep
5. Maya Angelou
6. Steven Spielberg
7. Bill Gates
8. Alex Trebek
9. Melinda Gates
10. Julia Roberts

So obviously a bunch of things jump out from these results. Five of the top ten are actors. One is a director, one is a game show host. The first person on the list who is not an actor is Maya Angelou, who is a lovely and interesting person, is primarily known in the public consciousness as a poet, so she's still sort of in the "entertainment" category. So that's eight out of ten who are entertainers, with Bill and Melinda Gates presumably being trusted at least as much for their charitable foundation as for Bill's history as a software magnate.

There's something weirdly, ironically interesting about a list of "the most trusted people in America" being more than 50% composed of people (if we include Spielberg) who make pretend stories for a living. (That's not an insult. I love movies, and I respect actors and directors. I just don't primarily think of them as people to go to for advice and information.)

Nobody who investigates or reports news is anywhere to be seen on the top ten. I know some people would conclude this means that journalists are inherently untrustworthy, but I think that's a little oversimplistic. Instead I'd point out say that that the way people get their information in an extremely fractured way now. As individual, you may trust or listen to one set of voices, but no matter who those might be, there are almost certainly a lot of people who actively, aggressively dislike them and think they are the biggest liars on the planet.

Quick check-in on my life

Hey folks. I don't know if anyone still follows this blog, but it's something that's been on my mind every once in a while this year.

When I look at the final few posts of the blog, it seems a little embarrassing. Like a lot of people, I wrote a number of confident posts pointing out that Donald Trump couldn't possibly win the election, because he's unpopular and terrible. I was in good company, but I was incredibly, comically wrong, and just writing a post to acknowledge that fact that is a big hurdle that I've taken this long to get to.

No, I didn't die of embarrassment or scurry off to a cave to disappear from society. It's just that the fact that this blog still exists, and what to use it for, didn't wind up being a terribly high priority for me.

The election sucked, but also at the end of last year, I got hit in the face with a lot of stuff to deal with at once. My work became significantly more challenging -- I've been writing back end software to build up the Fireside Gatherings website, and it's a real beast. My career is actually going quite well. It's been nine years since I completed my Master's degree, and it took me a long time to settle in to a permanent job, but I've been working for Blizzard for three years now. It's a fantastic company, and I've grown a lot as a software engineer. But the downside is, the more I've focused on work, the less energy I've had to sit down and do things like writing long posts.

On another front, I'm in my second year as president of the Atheist Community of Austin. It's pretty far from a full time job, but it's stressful enough to contribute to the same lack of desire to write posts. It's not a position I went after, but once I was in, I wanted to take some serious steps towards making the organization financially solid, improve donations and build up the TV show that I've been involved with for the past 17 years.

Also, my son Ben is now 15 years old. He's starting his sophomore year of high school, and he's learning to drive. I've always found parenting very rewarding, although raising a teenager is every bit as challenging as I've heard.

When I send personal email, I have a signature line to the various online places where I post stuff. That includes this blog. My main purpose in writing a new post was to make sure that I have a clear acknowledgement that I made mistakes in predicting last year's political outcome, although I still believe in the basic principles behind what I said. Trump was a dangerously ignorant and unqualified candidate, and as a president those qualities have made him even more dangerous. He was unpopular then, and he's unpopular now, but the people who do like him are very dedicated, and that's a reality we have to face in this country.

But also, I've noticed that I'm spread pretty thin in terms of online presence. Blogging doesn't hold the prominent place that it used to in our worldwide discourse; most people have moved on to platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and I'm no exception. I guess a lot of the time I scratch my writing itch by tossing off a quick witticism or comment on a news in a few paragraphs. Beyond that, as a regular host/cohost of The Atheist Experience and The Non-Prophets, I have lots of opportunity to trot out my opinions on some topics, and reach a pretty broad audience. None of that feels exactly the same as when I used to blog regularly, but again, I have a more limited supply of attention to devote to those things than I used to.

I've also been doing a number of talks in various places, to Secular Student Alliance groups and local atheist organizations. Next week I'm giving a talk on "Skepticism and Fake News" in San Antonio. I am thinking about writing a new brief introduction, and it occurred to me that I could post it on the blog to solidify my thoughts.

So I have a few purposes in writing this post now. First, I just want to pop in and say, sorry about not blogging much all year, but I'm still alive and well and things are generally fine for me. Second, I just want to clear out some of the cobwebs and own up to my past mistakes. And finally, I want to leave this as a reminder to post some new thoughts about fake news, which I have generally been doing before a live audience, so it's a good idea to have a written record of some of those thoughts.

Until next time! ... Even if it turns out that next time takes another year or two.