I don't think so. I think the bias in other fields poisons the well of good faith. Specifically the conservative interface to these fields is probably angry people on the Internet who are as likely to bash them for their climate politics as for their opinions on BLM protests. If they were better plugged-in to the sciences, I think they would see that climate science is less problematic than critical studies.

> You aren't going to get an argument from me that the mainstream media is perfect on this. However I think it is clear that centrist and left leaning media is much much better about this than right leaning media.

I agree. I think even when things were good in these institutions, their relationship with the right was already strained.

> Fair enough, but the loss of trust needs to be linked primarily to a perceived lack of truthfulness and I can't think of any examples of that either that aren't linked with an overt lack of truthfulness.

I'm having a hard time thinking of examples too. I think that the 'perceived vs overt' consideration is just a reflection on how bad things have gotten--if you abuse the trust of someone for a long time, eventually their perception of affairs will become exaggerated. That's basically the whole thesis. Note that it's possible that we can't regain the trust of some people who have such a distorted view, but even still it's worth being honest if only to keep more people from crossing the threshold (and insodoing, those who have already crossed will become more marginalized and constitute a decreasing percentage of the population).