To what extent was the media responsible for the changes in levels of public confidence in government in the years 1929-1981?

The period of 1929-1981 sees America fall from grace in economic collapse, rise to fight a devastating second world war and reinvent itself as the representation of Western values in the first major proxy war in modern history. Levels of public confidence across this period fluctuate greatly, with the early years of plummeting economic confidence over the Wall Street Crash followed by the renewed faith in the fireside chats of Roosevelt exemplifying these extremes. We must consider the caveats that it is confidence trends we are discussing rather than minutiae, and that there is a distinction between levels of confidence in a single president, or even in multiple presidents, and levels of confidence in “government” itself. With this considered, overall I believe that while we must recognise that levels of confidence in government are influenced by that government’s actions and the kind of society that those actions are aimed at. On balance the strongest argument lies in the idea that during this period the power of the media to influence confidence levels was the most significant, due to the new potential offered by the technological boom of the 1920s and the new style of reporting that emerged under President Truman.
This evolution of the role of the media across this period is of paramount importance when considering to what extent the media’s influence led, and therefore was responsible for, changes in levels of public confidence in government.  A strong argument here can be made for the idea that Truman’s lack of communication with the press over the Korean War, which he claimed to be just a “UN Police Action”, was offensive in the context of Roosevelt’s verbosity and so led to the media becoming more critical. How this criticism influenced public confidence can be seen in reports from 1950 suggesting that Truman wanted to increase troops (true), using the draft (false) and was considering the atomic bomb (false). Such reporting fuelled fear over the danger posed by the Korean War and so made the government that had claimed that it was a mere “police action” seem at best inept, and at worst dishonest.