Why Should I Trust You?
The question every journalism trust campaign in history was trying to answer.
Every news organization is selling something. Always has been. The slogan changes. The crisis changes. The technology changes. The promise does not — it shifts, mutates, upgrades, fails, and is replaced by a new one.
This archive collects 200 years of those promises. Not to mock — to examine. The exhibition does not answer whether journalism is good. It asks what journalism has promised, why those promises changed, and what the profession will need to promise next.
The project grew out of View From Somewhere, the INMA-commissioned research report Branding Journalism: How Journalism Organizations Market Themselves. The report analyzed more than 4,000 campaigns and traced six eras of how news organizations explain their public role.
The title is the hook. Why Should I Trust You? is the question every trust campaign — from All the News That's Fit to Print to Pure News, Straight from the Source — has tried to answer. The whole archive is one long answer.
The structure
Six chapters, not strict periods. Each chapter is defined by a dominant anxiety and the promise journalism made in response to it.
Inside each chapter: artifacts (mastheads, slogans, editorial declarations from before "campaign" was an idea) and campaigns (the modern advertising format, from MTV to NYT to Reuters). The propaganda annex is a separate room — for organizations that used the language of journalism but were never quite that.
The author
Jakub Górnicki is a journalist, artist, and media innovator. Co-founder of Outriders. Creator of Reakcja (journalism on stage), Prologue (venue, Warsaw), and Istoriya (cultural shelter, Lviv). Pioneers "Artistic Journalism" — transforming rigorous reportage into live, spatial, immersive experiences.
Recognition includes Paszport Polityki (Digital Culture, 2022), INMA Global Media Awards, Polsko-Niemiecka Nagroda Dziennikarska (2021), and a European Press Prize nomination.
The exhibition
Why Should I Trust You? exists in two containers. The digital experience on this site, and the physical exhibition that travels — first shown in Toronto under its working title View From Somewhere. The two share a canon of 200+ entries, three navigation modes, and the same closing question.
To bring the physical exhibition to your venue, festival, or journalism conference: jakubgornicki.com.
The Polish
Dlaczego mam ci ufać? — same energy, same confrontation.