Trust in Media at an All-Time Low
Posted By Philip Hodges on Jun 21, 2014 | 8 Comments
A new Gallup poll showed that more Americans distrust the media now than at any other time since Gallup started keeping track of it in 1993:
Americans’ faith in each of three major news media platforms — television news, newspapers, and news on the Internet — is at or tied with record lows in Gallup’s long-standing confidence in institutions trend. This continues a decades-long decline in the share of Americans saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers or TV news, while trust in Internet news remains low since the one prior measure in 1999.
[…]
Confidence in newspapers has declined by more than half since its 1979 peak of 51%, while TV news has seen confidence ebb from its high of 46% in 1993, the first year that Gallup asked this question. Gallup’s only previous measure of Internet news was in 1999, when confidence was 21%, little different from today.
[…]
While liberals are more likely to have confidence in newspapers than conservatives, conservatives are slightly more likely to express confidence in TV news (19%) than liberals (15%). For liberals, this 2014 reading represents an 11-percentage-point decline from 2013.
Most of those people responding to the survey had their own definitions of media.
A conservative who says he doesn’t trust the media is more than likely thinking of the “liberal” media, like MSNBC. He may not even view networks like Fox as being a part of the mainstream media. I’ve even heard Sean Hannity say on his radio show that he’s a part of the “conservative underground,” the “alternative” media. As if he’s not a part of the media at all.
The conservative hosts think they’re the ones trying to respond to the big, bad “mainstream media.” So, when conservatives were asked about their trust in media, they were thinking of the more liberal networks and newspapers, not the ones they happen to agree with.
And it was probably the same with the liberals who were surveyed. They were thinking of Fox when they told the pollster that they did not trust the media at all. They probably don’t really think of liberal networks as being part of “The Media.” Fox News is the media to liberals, and networks like MSNBC are only trying to respond to all the lies from the “right-wing” media.
All this poll really shows is that Americans hate the opposing teams’ respective media networks of choice more than they ever have before. People will still trust the networks and newspapers they agree with.
What many liberals and conservatives don’t realize is that they’re all a part of the media, and they’re all businesses looking to profit from wealthy advertisers. I don’t care if it’s Fox News or MSNBC; Sean Hannity or Chris Matthews; The Washington Post or The Washington Times. They’re all looking to make as much money as possible, and the amount of money they make is dependent on how many people they have watching their show, listening to their show, or reading their paper. This is why they have to make the “news” as shocking as possible and why they hire info-babes to read teleprompters. It keeps people hooked. This is also why no one should trust the media at all.
Read more at
http://lastresistance.com/6203/trust-media-time-low/#wkQQd6Aa2GtIvsou.99
