‘Trusted Sources’ Traces the Roots of Media Distrust and Features Solutions
Author:
Date:
04/25/2025
This week I attended a screening of the documentary Trusted Sources, which was released just last year. Afterward, I spoke on a panel with the film’s producer, Don Colacino, and Dana Coffield, the editor of the Colorado Sun, whose team’s work was featured along with Ad Fontes Media‘s and that of several other journalism, trust, and news literacy organizations.
The film does a great job of explaining how we got to our current state of media distrust, including a deeper historical perspective going back to the 1800s. But most importantly, it showcases not just the problems, but what individuals and organizations are doing about them. I invite you to watch it here.
There is a small fee to stream it from the website ($6.99). For those who care about these issues, it’s well worth it. Documentaries like this are a labor of love (this was several years in the making) and deserve your support. The audiences at each of the screenings I’ve attended have all been impressed and expressed the desire for more people they know to see it. If you watch it, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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Vanessa Otero is a former patent attorney in the Denver, Colorado, area with a B.A. in English from UCLA and a J.D. from the University of Denver. She is the original creator of the Media Bias Chart (October 2016), and founded Ad Fontes Media in February of 2018 to fulfill the need revealed by the popularity of the chart — the need for a map to help people navigate the complex media landscape, and for comprehensive content analysis of media sources themselves. Vanessa regularly speaks on the topic of media bias and polarization to a variety of audiences.
