Why Don’t You Trust Me: How Can Journalists Rebuild Trust With Marginalised Communities?

Caroline* vividly recalls when a journalist interviewed her for a piece. As a lived experience partner of The Trussell Trust, she’s passionate about how poverty is portrayed in the press. But when she saw the headline of the finished article, her “stomach just plummeted”.

She tells Journo Resources that several of her quotes were taken out of context — something she hadn’t seen in advance due to most newsrooms’ policies against copy approval. Bracing herself for the inevitable negative backlash, she says she felt “used”.

But Caroline’s experience isn’t unique and points to a much wider problem in the British media — trust. According to a 2023 survey by Kings College London, the UK has the second lowest levels of trust in the press across all 24 countries investigated. Within that, YouGov data shows the public holds a particularly dim view of tabloids — a clear problem when they consistently top the circulation charts.

Trust is an essential part of a healthy democratic press. Without it, we’re unable to tell the stories that matter and the public is left disengaged and unempowered — the perfect breeding ground for conspiracy theories and a lack of civic engagement. But just how can journalists start clawing it back?

Jen Birks, co-director of the Centre for Media, Politics, and Communication Research at the University of Nottingham (L) and Zino Onokaye-Akaka, programme manager at the charity, Heard (R).

Why Don’t People Trust The Media?

First, it’s important to understand who doesn’t trust us and why. Often, this is those from marginalised backgrounds, who rarely see themselves represented in the news. When they are, they don’t feel it represents their lived experience and identity.

It’s a problem that goes back centuries. Jen Birks is the co-director of the Centre for Media, Politics, and Communication Research at the University of Nottingham. She confirms to Journo Resources: “Those who experience misrepresentation will be more cynical about the media.”

But it’s a difficult cycle to break. She explains: “Social movement activists were routinely misrepresented over the second half of the 20th century in the UK and the US, but because they had collective strength (and middle-class resources) they were able to develop alternative media strategies. This is harder for other marginalised groups to achieve.”

And, as marginalised voices rarely get their voices heard in the media, their misrepresentation can have a lasting effect on the public mind. As 2023 research from the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford summarises: “Privileged audiences may be concerned about, say, sensationalism, but they rarely pay a personal price. Disadvantaged communities do.”

Take for example the narrative of “benefit scroungers”, popularised by tabloid papers and TV shows such as Jeremy Kyle in the early 2010s. As a result, studies found more than a third of the public believe most people in receipt of support are “fiddling” and “don’t really deserve any help”. In reality, less than three per cent of total benefit spending is believed to have been overpaid due to fraud.

If you don’t see yourself reflected faithfully, you’re unlikely to want to work with reporters. Caroline tells us: “When you see the negative reaction to some of these pieces that makes us more reluctant to reach out. Sometimes what you say isn’t always written in the way you want. It doesn’t fit the narrative. There are words omitted from what you’ve said.”

Zino Onokaye-Akaka agrees. She’s a programme manager at Heard, a charity that helps marginalised groups get their voices heard accurately and compassionately. “If your experience isn’t accurately represented, you just lose confidence in the media,” she explains.

The charity advocates for a more compassionate approach. While journalists quite rightly wouldn’t give copy approval to politicians, business owners, or PRs, it says those from marginalised backgrounds may need more support.

Should Interviewees Get Copy Approval?

Often without media training or knowledge of the publication process, marginalised or vulnerable interviewees may not know their boundaries. “Just allowing people to see their quotes beforehand [makes a big difference], just so they can double check,” says Zino.

Wudan Yan, an award-winning narrative journalist, agrees. Speaking to Journo Resources previously she said that when a topic is highly sensitive or when “representing a population or group of people who have traditionally been misrepresented” she’ll sometimes offer to send the relevant section of quotes to her source to check it correctly captures their perspective and sentiment.

“You can just copy and paste their particular sections in a separate Word document and send it over,” she explained. Crucially, this isn’t about sending over a whole piece for approval but allowing marginalised voices to check their narrative has been accurately portrayed.

Caroline agrees. She’d also like to see journalists checking other details too: making sure to agree in advance if pictures can be used, what name interviewees should go by, and what the headline might look like. This could mean giving your interviewee an insight into the angle you’re exploring or some topics you’d like to chat about in advance, to allow them to make an informed decision.

She also calls out a culture of clickbait, which she says often labels food bank users as jobless single parents. “The reality is that there are working families using food banks, not just single parents. But I think single parents get more angst. Working households using food banks just doesn’t seem to draw people in,” she says.

Start By Examining Your Own Biases

Juliana de Penha, founder of Migrant Women Press, echos this. Language, she says, can be a fundamental part of the problem: “When you speak about migrants and use the term illegal, you’re automatically criminalising people. There is a lack of humanisation in this discourse. We forget we are speaking about people; not just statistics.”

It’s part of a wider pattern says Jen, where “social media is increasingly dominated by entertainment.”

Addressing this starts with examining your own biases, says Megan Walder, a freelance journalist with extensive experience writing about poverty. “Journalists need to actively work on removing biases, or in some cases owning them,” she explains. “If people are more honest in the perspective they come from, you’re more likely to trust them.”

She also thinks it’s vital for journalists to meet their interviewees as much as possible, to break down stereotypes and prevent people from becoming statistics. “Journalists should speak, face-to-face where possible, with those relevant to their stories,” she emphasises.

“This should inform their research and writing. Meet the communities you’re speaking about. These ‘big bad wolves’ are, in fact, humans who have had their negative images created by misinformed journalists.”

After years of marginalisation, journalists also have to accept trust needs to be earned — it won’t just happen overnight. “The press needs to earn our trust,” stresses Jen, “which means being transparent about sources, not simplifying the story in a way that omits the nuances and the caveats, and not underestimating the audience.”

Similarly, journalists also need to trust their interviewees and their lived experience. Jen adds: “We have to trust others, we have to accord some people ‘cognitive authority’ because they are in a position to know. The world is too complex for us to think, naively, that we can trust ourselves, or ‘do our own research’.”

Trust may be at the heart of the British media’s problems in 2024 — but there is an answer that we can all work towards. Rebuilding trust won’t happen overnight, but we can build towards it, one accurate headline at a time.

* Last name withheld at the request of the interviewee, due to past experiences with the press. Images from Adobe Firefly.