The acerbic anti-Donald Trump conservative Jonah Goldberg says that — at National Review and currently TheDispatch.com — he has spent the past 25 years complaining about "liberal media bias."

But, he wrote last week, much has changed during that time with the breakup of America's onetime "hegemony" of three broadcast networks, the newsmagazines and a few influential newspapers. Now we have devoutly conservative news-talk radio and cable TV while infinite opinions of commentary and information overwhelm the Internet. 

Then there's rising distrust in the news media, which The Religion Guy believes is a serious threat to healthy democracy. A Pew Research Center survey, reported last August, found that since 2016 the percentage of Americans with at least "some" trust in the national news media has slumped from 76% down to 58%, and among Trump-era Republicans and Republican leaners from 70% down to 35%. 

Another simultaneous change, Goldberg said, is "the blurring of reporting with partisan punditry, particularly on cable news and social media." The Guy would contend that this distrust expands when partisan opinion seeps into or overshadows supposed hard news. (This is the spirit of our media age, since, as tmatt often observes here at GetReligion, opinion is cheap and actual reporting is expensive).

That brings us to religion coverage in the print media and the Internet (broadcasters and cable generally slight the beat) and a rather idiosyncratic must-read complaint about The New York Times from Hillsdale College historian D.G. Hart, posted at Real Clear Religion the same day as Goldberg's article. In case you missed it, the text is here. 

Hart thinks the Times "rightly" figures that explicitly religious periodicals can handle faith news, which means he does not read the paper that closely (though it can be criticized for sins of omission). The article appears to suggest the Times and other outlets should downplay or eliminate attempts to do religion-beat reporting -- which would remove the very reason GetReligion exists. 

But the main theme is that he's "surprised" to see Times columnists "take sides in ecclesiastical controversies," all but indicating these matters are none of their business. Specifically, he's peeved by David Brooks' huge article choosing favorites among anti-Trump evangelicals and scanning movement woes, along with several Ross Douthat pieces in recent times critiquing Pope Francis.

He thinks those opinion pieces raise "questions about the wisdom of using a powerful institution like the Times to alter affairs that have virtually no connection to the newspaper."

That seems odd. The Guy would say any savvy newspaper prints news or opinion on anything that's of general interest occurring in any sector of society. If anything, the media are guilty of neglecting religion (see this massive tmatt piece at The Quill from 1983). 

Note that both journalists are candid about their own belief. Brooks is a friendly outsider whose Jewish belief mingles with Christian leanings, whereas Douthat is an active and conservative. Catholic. Does that mean either or both pundits should not opine? It would be wise, however, to balance such opinion pieces with op-eds taking opposing stands.

Hart does admit reporting and commenting on religion "is fair game." Yet he dislikes it when informational "gatekeepers" use "their platform to influence debates among leaders who lack the means to take on opinions in a national publication."  

Well, the pope and conservative  evangelicals do have their own varied information outlets. And Goldberg's article observes that media criticism can produce sympathetic blowback that helps a targeted individual or movement. 

Since Hart would relegate religion journalism largely to religious periodicals, this moment should not pass without noting a ground-breaking article posted online by Christianity Today. The prominent evangelical magazine has boldly unearthed movement scandals before, but here the magazine investigated sexual misconduct among its own leaders. News editor Daniel Silliman was free to post his findings without any supervision by top executives.

How often do we see that? What impact will this effort have on circulation and donations? Will such tough candor help or hurt the reputation of CT and of evangelicalism? Remarkably, some of the best investigative work on evangelicalism is being done by evangelicals themselves — not the "mainstream" media or liberal opponents.

Disclosure: The Guy was CT's long-ago news editor before joining Time magazine and the Associated Press.