Just 21% of Americans believe all or most of what they read in their local papers, according to a poll last year by the Pew Center. In another survey, the center found that 45% believe news stories are "often inaccurate."
Asked to rate the ethical standards of various professions, Americans place journalists side by side with members of Congress -- near the bottom of the list. Only lawyers, advertising practitioners and car salesmen ranked lower, a 2000 Gallup poll found.
"There's a general undercurrent out there that we have an uncaring press, not particularly interested in getting everything right and not particularly interested in hearing from people who want to complain," said Bob Haiman, a senior fellow at the Freedom Forum, a nonprofit foundation that advocates for 1st Amendment rights.
If Americans perceive the press as aloof, they also recognize its power. And power is intimidating.
When Robert F. Horan, the chief prosecutor in Fairfax County, Va., held a news conference late last year to denounce one of Blair's articles on the sniper shootings as "dead wrong," he stepped to the microphone with a sense of wariness.
"My opening line to the press conference was that I was doing this against my better judgment, because you should never take on anyone who buys ink by the gallon," Horan later said. Because he did not want to discuss evidence in public, Horan refused to disclose -- even to Blair's editors -- exactly which parts of the article were inaccurate. The New York Times stood by its story.
Horan did not bother to complain the next time Blair wrote about "evidence" that Horan knew did not exist.
"An outfit like the New York Times carries almost an aura of being the gospel," he said.
A few months earlier, Pete Mahoney, the associate athletic director at Kent State University, had come to a similar conclusion.
Mahoney was furious about an article in which Blair wrote that Kent State was scrambling to meet NCAA standards for football-game attendance -- and that it sponsored tailgate parties and counted everyone in the parking lot as "in attendance." Blair quoted Mahoney as saying: "We are going to try it until someone tells us to stop."
The trouble was, Blair and Mahoney had only exchanged voice mails. "How can you make up that stuff? He was setting me up for a punch in the belly," Mahoney said.
But Mahoney felt it would be futile to seek a retraction.
