I don't know anyone who went into the field of journalism expecting to win a popularity contest.

It's not in the nature of the profession to be loved. We are accustomed to a public that is more inclined to "kill the messenger" who brings bad news.

So it is not surprising that the respected Pew Research Center finds that public discontent with the news media has increased dramatically.

"Americans find the mainstream media much less credible than they did in the mid-1980s," Pew said in report titled "Trends 2005."

It added that "more ominously, the public also questions the news media's core values and morality."

Ouch. That hurts. Truth and "just the facts" are what journalists are trained to pursue.

Living up to those high ideals may be another story. And certainly we have had reporters fall by the wayside for embellishment or fabrication. But they are a tiny, tiny minority and are soon out of a job.

There is also the crucial distinction between news reports and opinion columns, a gap that is sometimes blurred in the minds of readers.

The trend to hammer the media has been going on since former Vice President Spiro Agnew kicked off an anti-press crusade for the Nixon administration in 1969. It was a signal for conservatives to target reporters.

Now, the broadcast talk shows are dominated by the daily diatribes of their far-right conservative hosts. The editors of some major newspapers, apparently running scared in the face of the reactionary surge, are giving higher profiles to columnists who flog the conservative and pro-administration line.

The sad truth is that we have become a country where few towns have more than one daily newspaper, in contrast to the era when major cities had two and even three newspapers.

Now people keep up with the news -- if at all -- with a variety of other outlets: radio, television, cable TV and the Internet. Even then, the Pew Center says "the public has less of a news habit than it did a decade ago." Young people say they are too busy to keep up with the news.

The survey showed that more young people watch comedy shows such as Comedy Central's " Daily Show" and "Saturday Night Live" rather than the network evening news broadcasts. As good as Jon Stewart is in parodying the news, his show should not be a substitute for the real thing.

Some of the sharpest political commentary is showing up in comic strips. For example, cartoonist Garry Trudeau has recently focused his "Doonesbury" strip on the Bush administration's credibility gap and the challenges of military recruiting travails. His cartoons pack more punch than any column could.

Pew also said journalists are facing a crisis of confidence from rising public criticism and increasing competition. Furthermore, more and more journalists are finding "that bottom-line pressures had undermined the quality of coverage."

There also has been steady erosion in the credibility ratings of the media. The report said two decades ago, just 16 percent of Americans said they could believe little or nothing of what they read in their daily paper; in the most recent survey, that number nearly tripled to 45 percent.

The Pew report said that radio newsroom staffing plummeted 57 percent between 1994 and 2001, and the number of network news correspondents has declined more than one-third since the mid-1980s.

Publishers and corporate owners of broadcast outlets are laying down percentage markers on profits at a time when they should be more concerned with putting out the best news reports they can.

When it comes to describing the press, the Pew report found twice as many respondents believe that news organizations are "liberal" as opposed to "conservative."

The survey also said Americans are finding the media untrustworthy and lacking in compassion. The number "saying that the press is immoral, rather than moral, has more than doubled since the mid-1980s, from 13 percent to 32 percent."

All that said, the Pew report declared that "despite the widespread criticism of the press on a number of fronts, the public continues to be largely supportive of the news media's role as a political watchdog."

That's good news because it is what the press does best in a democratic society.

(Helen Thomas can be reached at the e-mail address hthomas@hearstdc.com).

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