Can the media regain public trust?

I read through this section of the book and thought that I sided more with the no side presented by John Hockenberry. Hockenberry presented the no argument to the issue which is can the media regain public trust. I think through his argument he gave a lot of good reasons why his argument is more believable. The section states that, “Networks are built on the assumption that audience size is what matters most. Content is secondary, it exists to attract passive viewers who will sit still for advertisements. For a while, that assumption served the industry well. But the TV news business has been blind to the revolution that made the viewers blink: the digital organization of communities that are anything but passive” (164) the fact that most people know and the media networks have made no conscious effort to hide the fact that they care about ratings has an effect. The news sites are many and they fight for popularity to stay on air but the fact that they seem to be oblivious to actual viewers needs has become more apparent.  The media has shown that popularity and catching the viewers attention is what matters most, in the recent events on the San Bruno fire the media scrambled informing of anything and everything to be the first with the news and with the most even if unimportant or factually wrong. “point out the corporate-integrity people unhelpful details about how NBC News was covering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that our GE parent company stood to benefit from as a major defense contractor” (169) the news at times can help bring down people that are trying to scheme the society, the ones that are doing shady business or things that look wrong in broad daylight. However, the fact that these sites find stories that are huge is to be questioned, I know that some are good reporters, some are not good at hiding their tracks but seems like too good to be true sometimes that such a big story happens to fall into only one broadcasting sites hands. The last quote that makes me think is “The multibillion-dollar bin laden construction giant that built mosques, roads, and other infrastructure all over the world. GE had long done business with the bin Laden’s” (169) I think that it is very fishy how things are show in the media to have occurred. These major corporations and businesses in the US run by well known people are working with the Laden’s that are a family that is said to have caused the U.S a major catastrophe. However instead of faulting a man that is in business with them and possibly makes them millions they simply move the target from his family to another’s. I know that a lot has come out and time has passed but I think that it is time that we really look into what happened and who is to fault for such a big cover up aka bush should pay for tampering and putting potentially the nation at risk by letting him go and going after an irrelevant party.