Distrust of the ‘mainstream media’ is increasingly common, and has led to the spreading of conspiracy theories.
The argument
On this view, belief in conspiracy theories is downstream of a collapse in the standing of the press, and so belongs to a wider distrust of the mainstream. Proponents observe that the media is increasingly portrayed as untrustworthy, to the point where identifying an outlet as part of the mainstream media functions as an insult rather than a description. Once that characterisation takes hold, the press is no longer trusted to bring people even-handed reporting, and those who still want to know what is happening must look for it somewhere else. The argument's force lies in where that search leads. Audiences driven away from established outlets do not stop consuming news; they move to small outlets that face none of the same scrutiny and may simply be peddling conspiracies. What such sources offer arrives with the advantage of not coming from the discredited mainstream, which is precisely the quality the audience has learned to value. Distrust of one set of sources thus converts into credulity towards another. Supporters then identify a second mechanism that makes the resulting beliefs unusually durable. This inherent distrust of the media creates a closed circle of reasoning: because the press is presumed complicit, evidence that directly disproves a conspiracy theory can be disregarded without examination by accusing it of being a coverup orchestrated by the media. Disconfirmation is thereby turned into confirmation, since a well-documented rebuttal is exactly what a coordinated concealment would be expected to produce. On this account the belief is not held in spite of the counter-evidence but insulated from it by the same distrust that made the conspiracy plausible to begin with, which is why proponents locate the explanation in distrust of the mainstream rather than in the content of any particular theory.
Premises
Counter-arguments
The direction of causation is the weak point. Distrust of the media and belief in conspiracy theories clearly correlate, but it is at least as plausible that conspiracist thinking produces media distrust as the reverse — someone already committed to a hidden-plot worldview will dismiss mainstream outlets as complicit, so the 'closed circle' the argument describes could be the effect of conspiracy belief rather than its cause. Distrust is also insufficient on its own: very large numbers of people distrust mainstream media without adopting conspiracy theories, so distrust cannot be the explanation for why the subset who do believe them do so. That points back toward the sibling explanations — the cognitive and psychological factors such as pattern-seeking, need for control and in-group protection that generate both the conspiracy belief and the media distrust together — suggesting distrust is better understood as a symptom of the same underlying disposition than as the root cause.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] The causal arrow may run the other way: a prior commitment to conspiracy thinking leads people to reject mainstream media, so distrust can be an effect rather than a cause. [Rejecting P3] Vast numbers distrust the media without turning to conspiracy theories, so distrust is insufficient to explain why the minority who believe them do.