Majority Now Believe Media Reports News They Know is Fake, False, or Purposely Misleading
“Across the board, trust in traditional news outlets continues to sink”
People throw around the term ‘fake news’ these days but it turns out a majority of the American people believe it’s a real problem. Conservatives are no longer alone in their accusations of media bias.
Joe Concha is a media reporter for The Hill and points to a report from Axios:
Stunning Axios poll that goes well beyond the usual conservative sentiment: “An overwhelming majority of Americans (70%) say that ‘traditional major news sources report news they know to be fake, false, or purposely misleading.’ – https://t.co/d2Z9Sv9WtW
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) June 27, 2018
Sara Fischer wrote the report for Axios:
92% of Republicans think media intentionally reports fake news
Nearly all Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (92%) say that traditional news outlets knowingly report false or misleading stories at least sometimes, according to a new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll. Democrats and non-leaning independents also feel this way, but not nearly to the same extent.
Why it matters: The data shows that trust in the media is heavily influenced by partisan politics, with Republicans more skeptical of mainstream media than their Democratic and Independent counterparts. Other studies from Gallup and Pew Research Center have drawn similar conclusions.
Across the board, trust in traditional news outlets continues to sink, with the overwhelming majority of Americans (70%) saying that “traditional major news sources report news they know to be fake, false, or purposely misleading.”
- President Trump has exacerbated the skepticism amongst hardline conservatives with polarizing language (and tweets) about the mainstream media being “fake news.
Bad intentions: Among those that think traditional news outlets report false news, most think they do so intentionally.
- More than two-thirds (65%) say fake news is usually reported because “people have an agenda.”
- Roughly one-third (30%) believe such information is shared due to laziness or “poor fact-checking.”
- Hardly anyone (3%) thinks that fake news makes headlines by accident.
Professor Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit notes that the headline from Axios reinforces the findings of the report.
Media perceptions have been trending in this direction for a while now. Earlier this month, Andrew Malcolm wrote at Hot Air:
Confirmed: Americans See Media Bias Everywhere–And They’re Angry
Here, for a change, is a Friday bad-news dump for our country’s news media: Americans don’t believe you anymore. In fact, they’re pretty sure you knowingly publish inaccurate news, distort it and even make stuff up to suit your political bias and agenda.
And if you distribute the news on social media, they believe you even less.
These results from recent public surveys are not just bad news for the news business, struggling through a now-chronic financial crisis. They’re bad news for our form of democracy, which requires informed participation by voters relying on accurate news to cast their ballots. Misinformation can easily result in mistaken choices, or none at all.
Honestly, when consuming the news have you ever thought, even briefly, “What’s the point of objecting, they’re gonna publish what they want anyway?”
Just yesterday, Ace of Spades noted that CNN is now falling behind the Food Network in ratings.
That’s gotta hurt.
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Comments
The traditional standard, the scientific standard: multiple, independent, not “independent”, reports, to reduce autocorrelation (e.g. confirmation bias, journolism).
92% of Republicans think media intentionally reports fake news
IMO, the bigger surprise is that 53% of Democrats think the media is fake news.
Sounds like the Dims need to send a bunch of apostates to reeducation camps.
Even worse, while the Axios piece notes that 92% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (because that makes the number higher) think the media is fake news, it notes that more Democrats ‘check the facts’ while completely forgetting that a majority of Dems think the same as Republicans.
The fact that even a majority of Democrats accept the fact that fake news exists, it speaks volumes.
“IMO, the bigger surprise is that 53% of Democrats think the media is fake news.”
The 53% are the dems/progressives that think the media is too conservative.
I really got under this one guy’s skin who was reading the NYT after the election. I said, “so I hear that the NYT has promised to stop lying, which of course, is a lie as well.” Guy just went ballistic. Mission accomplished.
If there has been any collusion, it has been between the US media and Pravda, for tips and techniques.
At first, the reasons for the decline were understandable. They may have even elicited sympathy: that news wasn’t profitable, so companies HAD to inject opinion to stay afloat.
But after a while, citizens noticed that the stories kept being pumped out even WHEN THEY HURT NETWORKS’ RATINGS. It became too obvious that we were being told a never-ending stream of lies for political purposes.
Media companies aren’t slanting the news to stay afloat, but to control public opinion. What they refuse to cover is as important as what they cover.
I despise CNN far more than MSNBC. MSNBC makes no pretense of being anything other than a propaganda network. CNN masquerades as a news network.
“Experts say” or “studies show” are two key words. They are a tell that the newsreader is just about to dump a whole wheelbarrow of bovine excrement in your ears.
The difficulty with loss of credibility is that it is something that is almost impossible to regain.
16 years ago, Bernie Goldberg explained this phenomenon in his book “Bias”. Bias, prejudice, and bigotry are the default for fallen humanity. Restraining these tendencies requires the life-changing impact of the Gospel, which has been banned from our education system.
Here’s a key insight the authors may have missed: a majority now believes this because it’s true.
One thing that’s pretty consistent with Progressive Fascists is they believe the lie that Fox News tells lies. It could be that this is why 53% think the media lies.
No surprise to those of us overseas. State broadcasters throughout the West, funded by their political helmsmen the grandee bureaucrats, are as immune to criticism as they are allergic to the canons of journalism. Long ago they deserted any pretence of fact loaded objectivity, in favour of a fawning globalist polemic. Like CNN, their audiences dwindle into inconsequentiality.