Yet does the public really have such a low opinion of newspapers? Gallup’s wording of its question is pretty vague. It didn’t ask respondents to rate the specific newspapers they read but to express their levels of confidence in the newspaper as an institution. They might have gotten a more positive answer if they had asked people how they feel about the daily newspaper they actually read. When the Pew Research Center asked this question in 2005, they found that 80 percent of Americans give favorable ratings to their daily. Local TV news, cable news and network TV news are rated only slightly worse. Granted, that’s data from a 17-year-old survey, but it shows that asking a slightly different question about the press can produce a startlingly different answer.

Hating newspapers but loving one’s own daily has a congressional parallel familiar to many in Washington. In 1978, political scientist Richard Fenno formulated “Fenno’s paradox,” which states that people generally disapprove of Congress but support their own congressman. That’s why members of Congress often run against Congress. If Fenno’s paradox applies to newspapers, perhaps the crisis in confidence Gallup has measured isn’t all of what it’s cracked up to be.