Misinformation, mistrust and the media: Panelists weigh how journalism can regain its footing

PUBLISHED: June 9, 2026 | www.baltimoresun.com

Armstrong Williams, co-owner of The Baltimore Sun, former Voice of America director Amanda Bennett and former Washington Post publisher Don Graham discussed misinformation in journalism during a panel at Towson University on Monday night.

The panel, hosted by Erica Green, the New York Times White House correspondent and former reporter at The Sun, focused on how news outlets have evolved in recent years and how the media can work to regain readers’ trust.

“I’m not into the left or right. I don’t care about somebody’s ideology,” Williams said. “We care about the facts, and we read the facts, and that’s what we strive and struggle for every day, to tell you the facts.”

The panel discussed how the spread of misinformation on social media and the decline in the number of news outlets in the United States have eroded public trust in journalism. Over the past two decades, nearly 40% of all newspapers in the United States have folded, according to research from Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative.

At the same time, Green pointed out that the panel’s members all hail from news outlets that have faced accusations of ideological bias, which affects their relationships with their audiences.

“Journalism organizations and institutions are fighting external forces … they’re fending off accusations of being biased,” Green said. “Usually, that’s the institution fighting externally. We are seeing media institutions having to have these battles internally. Yes, I’m talking about CBS. Yes, I’m talking about Voice of America. You know, we are now in this time where the public is looking to us, in such a polarizing time, yet we’re kind of imploding ourselves.”

Panelists pointed to local news as a way to rebuild trust among audiences. Bennett, a former editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, said she believes there’s a “resurgence” in local news, as more philanthropic dollars are being poured into sustaining the media industry.

“I think the local news is, if you can make it work, is what’s going to save those people,” Bennett said. “There are issues that people can touch, and right now, when you talk about misinformation and disinformation, it’s in the headlines. That’s because we’re looking at things through social media.”

Graham, who helmed the Post until 2013, reflected on his experience at the paper during the Watergate scandal in 1972, emphasizing the importance of verifying facts without letting politics get in the way.

“When those burglars broke into the Watergate, no one had a clue where that would lead. No one, including The Washington Post, I’ll guarantee you,” Graham said. “It was step by step, fact by fact, we learned things that weren’t apparent on June 17, 1972. That story goes nowhere if each of those stories, if each of the individual news stories weren’t true, if they made one mistake.”

Towson University’s Ben and Myrna Cardin Center for Civic Engagement and Civil Discourse, overseen by the former Democratic U.S. senator from Maryland and his wife, organized the panel. The center hosts three public panel discussions each year, and plans to continue its speaker series once Towson begins its next academic year, Cardin said.

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