We talked in earlier episodes about earning a journalist’s trust by being a dependable, ethical source of information. But you want to work with reporters whom you can trust, right? After all, trust is a two-way street in the reporter-source relationship.

There have been some glaring examples recently of media behaving badly, and I bet they’ve caused some people to rethink their trust of the media as a whole. Perhaps the most egregious example comes from Rolling Stone, which was forced to apologize and retract an article about an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity after major discrepancies surfaced in the article.

Any time such things happen, it’s easy as a potential interviewee to want to shy away from – or even completely shut off – the media. Some people question whether there’s any use in doing an interview if the media are bound to screw up the story.

While skepticism is always healthy – including when working with journalists – you can most certainly trust the right reporters in the right situations. In this week’s episode, we talk about when to trust the media vs. when to trust your skepticism.