The News Industry in US Why do so many Americans distrust what they read in their newspapers? The American Society of Newspa

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问题                         The News Industry in US
    Why do so many Americans distrust what they read in their newspapers? The American Society of Newspaper Editors is trying to answer this painful question. The organization is deep into a long serf-analysis known as the journalism credibility project.
    Sad to say, this project has turned out to be mostly low-level findings about factual errors and spelling and grammar mistakes, combined with lots of head-scratching puzzlement about what in the world those readers really want.
    But the sources of distrust go way deeper. Most journalists learn to see the world through a set of standard templates (patterns) into which they plug each day’s events. In other words, there is a conventional story line in the newsroom culture that provides a backbone and a ready-made narrative structure for otherwise confusing news.
    There exists a social and cultural disconnect between journalists and their readers, which helps explain why the "standard templates" of the newsroom seem alien to many readers. In a recent survey, questionnaires were sent to reporters in five middle-size cities around the country, plus one large metropolitan area. Then residents in these communities were phoned at random and asked the same questions.
    Replies show that compared with other Americans, journalists are more likely to live in upscale neighborhoods, have maids, own Mercedeses, and trade stocks, and they’re less likely to go to church, do volunteer work, or put down roots in a community.
    Reporters tend to be part of a broadly defined social and cultural elite, so their work tends to reflect the conventional values of this elite. The astonishing distrust of the news media isn’t rooted in inaccuracy or poor reportorial skills but in the daily clash of world views between reporters and their readers.
    This is an explosive situation for any industry, particularly a declining one. Here is a troubled business that keeps hiring employees whose attitudes vastly annoy the customers. Then it sponsors lots of symposiums and a credibility project dedicated to wondering why customers are annoyed and fleeing in large numbers. But it never seems to get around to noticing the cultural and class biases that so many former buyers are complaining about. If it did, it would open up its diversity program, now focused narrowly on race and gender, and look for reporters who differ broadly by outlook, values, education, and class.  
The results of the journalism credibility project turned out to be ______.

选项 A、quite trustworthy
B、somewhat contradictory
C、very illuminating
D、rather superficial

答案D

解析 根据本题题干可以定位到第二段,文中指出“该项目最终所发现的原因大都是新闻报道中的事实错误,拼写或语法错误,以及许多关于读者到底想读些什么等诸如此类令人挠头的困惑”,在作者看来,这些发现大都是“低级的”(low-level),而真正的原因没有这么表面“go way deeper”(第三段首句中)。因此可以判定答案是D选项。
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