“…One variable that warrants further consideration, we believe, is trust in the news media. In recent years, news organizations have su↵ered a significant loss of public trust, due to, among other things, declining reporting standards triggered by commercial pressures and by the increasingly competitive media environment, and widely-publicized scandals such as the one involving the now defunct tabloid News of the World (Fisher, 2016). In light of this, one of the reasons why denial was relatively e↵ective might have been that the participants were unsure whether to blame the accused company because they did not fully trust the news story they read.…”