Christiane Amanpour Exposes Why There Is Distrust in Media By Completely Ducking Question About Distrust in Media

Christiane Amanpour on the Talk Easy podcast

Though unintentionally, Christiane Amanpour has just displayed the foundational problems in the media. She sat in with Sam Frogoso on his Talk Easy podcast, and he asked the venerated newswoman about the underlying problem in the press.

Frogoso asked her about the loss of trust in the news media, and Amanpour’s roundabout excuse-making and avoidance is emblematic of what has been seen in the press for years. Journalists are aware of the problem (obvious that it is), yet they consistently refuse to look into and admit the core issues causing this dilemma.

For at least a generation now, we have watched the public trust in the media dissolve on an annual basis. Polls show a persistent decline in faith in the press. After a peak of trust seen in the mid-1970s, it has been a plunging decline with news consumers.

Two years ago, the annual Gallup faith in the press poll for the first time showed more people had zero faith in the press than those who had a “Great Deal” and “Fair Amount” – combined! That is a staggering reality, and one most plying their trade in journalism do not want to address.

Trust in the mass media is at an all time low according to Gallup.

Only 28% of people trust the media a great deal or fair amount.

People are looking for themselves not just accepting what mass media, who have controlled narratives, are saying to them.

Examine things for… pic.twitter.com/PExsm6tfAB

— ChelseaRiessMatthews (@1ChelseaM) October 6, 2025

In getting into this topic in their discussion, Christiane Amanpour starts by insisting that a healthy democracy needs to have a “healthy and vibrant independent press”. Well, it is more than fair to note that the press industry has not been healthy for some time. Christiane does her best to avoid the central issues and instead looks to explain away the forces causing this distrust.

Over the past decade, and particularly over the past few years, a series of events have happened which conspired to puncture trust in institutions. So you have the internet, you have social media, you have all of this stuff that has divided people – there’s no crossing the aisle, no crossing party lines anymore, even in Congress. Everything is weaponized; ideas are weaponized, politics are weaponized, opinions are weaponized. So the people are being brought up on a diet of hatred.

To start, this is not a contemporary problem in the press. As shown in the Gallup chart, this distrust has been on a foundering trajectory for decades. But this would require honest introspection, which is the very thing most in the press have been refusing to address.

Frogoso does well to follow her gauzy explanation with a direct question about her own network. “Do you think CNN has contributed to that culture?” Christiane Amanpour does not answer that question and instead redirects towards another path.

She says that “we have suffered from” changing economics and business models. She prattled on with her explanations that were filled with listing items and listing names, filibustering to sound like she answered the query she was avoiding. She completely shirked the question and painted CNN as some kind of victim of circumstance.

She was asked directly if CNN was part of the problem of trust, and she displayed that it is a fact by the way she completely ducks the question. Her avoidance means it is not debatable, and her refusal to address it shows directly why there is that mistrust.

Then Christiane Amapour provided some obliviousness. She says that in this environment of distrust, people come to her and ask where they should turn to find the truth. She says she directs them to outlets such as the New York Times and CNN. So her “solution” for those who have no faith in the press is to rely upon those same outlets they are saying they no longer trust.

Christiane Amanpour is displaying the very problem that has led to this dissolving of faith the public has in the press. She is steadfastly refusing to even admit she and her outlets are the cause of the distrust.

CNN was a promoter for years of the Russian collusion canard. It was denying the Hunter Biden laptop as legitimate, and arguing against the fact that Joe Biden’s mental slide was real. And here is Amanpour insisting on relying on her outlet, which has proven itself to be a dubious source of truth.

Without a willingness to admit to fostering the problem, this eroded trust will only continue to dissolve. Christiane Amanpour is displaying the reason we are not seeing corrective action taken; she, like so many others in the industry, recognizes there is a problem, but refuses to take steps to repair that trust

This is a case of old-guard journos not wanting to admit their methodology has been exposed over the years. They want to remain the gatekeepers, as we saw this weekend in their refusal to work with any new media outlets.

The legacy media Amanpour references wants their traditional position of power and cannot figure out why it is no longer working. These are people who are fully consumed with their own self-worth and yet are unwilling to look at themselves in the mirror.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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