It's closely related. We're talking about the relationship between trust and credibility. ...something that climatologists and talkshow hosts seem to use to their own benefit irregardless of absolute truth.
I think the bottom line is (unfortunately) that almost everybody seems to have an agenda if you look a little farther into things and don't simply take their expertise and experience at face value. :-)
Thanks again, Hiredhand. Trust is the result of presumed cedibility. Yet, when the talking heads are proven to have either abused the trust placed in them or, alternatively, proven to be not credible, the faithful, who desperately want to believe in, and believe, the talking head do not hesitate to disregard the breach because the falsity was something they wanted to believe and fervently wish were true. Therefore, the wish becomes father to the conclusion and the disconnected voice retains its authoritative place in their lives. The apparent breach of trust or untruthfulness of the representation thus simply doesn't matter.
The result is predictable. Knowing that, irrespective of the falsity of the representation made or the exposure of the breach of trust and without the fear of losing listeners, these talking heads can, and repeatedly do, make outlandish, false and reckless representations of fact (rather than opinion) they know to be untrue without the anxiety of potential audience loss.
The cake icing on this specie of communication fraud is their universal neat trick, the nice touch of pandering by shameless, and patently untrue, flattery by cooing that: ''...you're the world's smartest audience whom no one can fool...'' Of course, that's ''no one but me.'' Often the talking heads complain that professional athletes are paid too much for what they do; the irony is that it is they who rack up the really big bucks for telling folks what they want to hear while any confluence with truth is a nice, but superfluous, coincidence.