There is a new fascinating study that looks at how the public reacted to political discourse.

It found that an uncivil tone lowers trust, but disagreements did not.
https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/189779833/Manuscript_and_appendices.pdf

To put this in simpler terms, what this means is that when politicians behave badly against each other, it impacts trust overall. But having a political debate, even when the politicians massively disagree with each other, did not affect trust.

This is important for us in the press because we know that trust in politics and trust in the news often goes together. And so, if we know that this is the effect, we need to consider adjusting our editorial focus and requirements accordingly.

In other words, if we want to increase trust in news, we need to focus more on political debates rather than on reporting that some politicians are saying something nasty about another person.

But, you say, we need to 'hold the politicians to account'. Yeah, but we can do that in two ways.

We can 'amplify' what they are saying, by reporting about it, which will lower trust.

Or we can say, "We are not going to cover what you say you if you can't act like an adult."

Instead, we tell the politicians that there is a 'code of conduct' that the press must meet to be reported. It has to be civil, fact-based, and focusing on political issues.

If the politicians can't act that way, we will just interview someone who can instead.

Think about how that editorial change could improve public discourse and help fix the growing problems around trust in both news and politics.