Thanks for nothing, Chris Cuomo.

The public’s trust in traditional media is at an all-time low, with 56% of Americans agreeing with the statement that, “Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations,” according to data reported by Axios.

It doesn’t help that former President Donald Trump spent his campaign and time in office popularizing the term “fake news” and branding journalists “the enemy of the people.”

It doesn’t help that social media has blurred the lines, almost to the point of erasure, between vetted, fact-checked information and the rantings of ill-informed ideologues.

And it doesn’t help that 68% of Americans usually get their news from television, where many cable news hosts have abandoned all pretense of objectivity in favor of the sweet lure of ratings — ratings that are easier to achieve when you sow outrage and fear, rather than deliver insights and context.

It’s within that landscape that Cuomo, the host of CNN’s nightly show “Cuomo Prime Time,” joined strategy session phone calls with the staff of his older brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, to discuss the handling of sexual harassment allegations against the governor.

“The cable news anchor encouraged his brother to take a defiant position and not to resign from the governor’s office,” the Washington Post reported last week. “At one point, he used the phrase ‘cancel culture’ as a reason to hold firm in the face of the allegations, two people present on one call said.”

Chris Cuomo set an uncomfortable precedent last year when he invited his brother onto his show for frequent coronavirus updates and conversations early in the pandemic — a boundary that many journalists (including me) believed he shouldn’t have crossed.

And revelations that Chris Cuomo got special access to state-administered COVID-19 tests when his brother’s administration dispatched state health officials to his relatives’ homes and expedited their test results, reported first in the Washington Post, are exactly why.

Newsrooms often go to great lengths to prevent their employees from partaking in any activity that could even imply a conflict of interest. At the Chicago Tribune, we sign a pages-long ethics policy every year that mandates we don’t accept gifts from sources, don’t offer or accept favors to or from people, don’t participate in political rallies or protests, don’t donate money to politicians or candidates for elected office.

The rules apply to everyone — reporters, editors, photographers, page designers. And — this is important — opinion writers.

Because whether you’re encouraged to keep your opinions out of your work — as reporters are — or encouraged to let your opinions inform and populate your work — as columnists and critics are — you still need to avoid, at all costs, appearing beholden to anyone. Especially a politician — even if he or she is family.

Your words — written or spoken, opinion-free or opinionated — are supposed to come from a pure, uncompromised place.

It’s why I could write a column saying I liked Elizabeth Warren’s ideas, but I couldn’t contribute to her presidential campaign. I can’t have a vested, financial interest in her success. My words can’t be an attempt at securing myself a good return on investment.

CNN is walking an uncomfortable line here. By choosing not to discipline Chris Cuomo, they’re making it hard for viewers to trust that the network’s reports and analysis are uncompromised by employees’ personal connections.

The network is also asking viewers to trust its past and future stories about sexual harassment, even as it employs a guy who participated in the active brushing off of numerous women’s allegations, simply because they were made against his brother.

That’s a tough sell, and it should be.

It’s not so different from Fox News continuing to employ Sean Hannity, even as he acted as an adviser to Trump.

It’s frustrating, both as a journalist and as an consumer of news and analysis, to see such blatant conflicts of interest shrugged off by both the folks participating in the conflicts and their employers, particularly when their employers play such an outsize role in shaping public opinion of the media.

It erodes public trust at a time when it’s imperative for people to receive and believe the news — for public safety, for the well-being of our communities, for the health of our democracy. And trust, once it’s gone, is incredibly difficult to win back.