Trust in Traditional Media Hits 46%, a New Low
“we don’t have a misinformation problem, we have a trust problem.”
Axios reported that Edelman’s annual trust barometer showed a major drop in Americans trusting traditional media and social media.
Fake news? No, it is not because people believed President Donald Trump’s description of the media.
The stats apply to American and foreign media:
The big picture: These numbers are echoed across the rest of the world: They’re mostly not a function of Donald Trump’s war on “fake news”.
- As vaccine rumor hunter Heidi Larson puts it, “we don’t have a misinformation problem, we have a trust problem.”
- News organizations have historically relied mainly on advertising income, and as those dollars flow increasingly to Google and Facebook, that has created institutional weakness that shows up in trust data.
A lot of people, especially the government, lash at social media over censorship and favoring one side of the news.
But is it worth the anger?
The trust barometer revealed that only 27% trusted social media.
From Axios:
By the numbers: For the first time ever, fewer than half of all Americans have trust in traditional media, according to data from Edelman’s annual trust barometer shared exclusively with Axios. Trust in social media has hit an all-time low of 27%.
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56% of Americans agree with the statement that “Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.”
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58% think that “most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.”
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When Edelman re-polled Americans after the election, the figures had deteriorated even further, with 57% of Democrats trusting the media and only 18% of Republicans.
Maybe, just maybe, our betters need to realize that the majority of Americans are smart and alert. We also see through their charade and lies.
I don’t want to say people because I don’t know many who do this, but media personalities tend to think highly of themselves. This happens especially after they receive praise from those in their own bubble.
They attempt to pass off “stretching the truth” as facts, hoping we normies in Hicktown, USA, believe them because who wouldn’t? After all, their peers love them and they schmooze with Hollywood A-listers.
The mainstream media lost their way a long time ago. They completely gave up with President Barack Obama and went all deranged with President Donald Trump.
I’m not saying they made up everything during Trump’s administration. It’s just that their reporting on Trump differed from others that many people ignored any facts because they showcased their bias.
“Why didn’t they do this with Obama?” “They weren’t this harsh with Bush!”
It’s sad that some organizations have promised to report facts while journalists remind colleagues of their job descriptions:
- Former Financial Times editor Lionel Barber talks of factual reporting as a means of “regaining the trust of the reading public”.
- Axios has a stated mission to “help restore trust in fact-based news”.
- Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan writes that “our goal should go beyond merely putting truthful information in front of the public. We should also do our best to make sure it’s widely accepted.”
How does the traditional media lure back Americans? CEOs:
How it works: Media outlets can continue to report reliable facts, but that won’t turn the trend around on its own. What’s needed is for trusted institutions to visibly embrace the news media.
- CEOs (a/k/a the fourth branch of government) are at or near the top of Edelman’s list of trusted institutions.
- By the numbers: 61% of Trump voters say that they trust their employer’s CEO. That compares to just 28% who trust government leaders, and a mere 21% who trust journalists.
The bottom line: CEOs have long put themselves forward as the people able to upgrade America’s physical infrastructure. Now it’s time for them to use the trust they’ve built up to help rebuild our civic infrastructure.
Just do your job. That’s it. Report the facts. Don’t use hyperbole. Don’t stretch the truth.
Believe it or not the majority of us normies and regular people do not like the drama and just want the facts. Embellishment and theatrics are tiresome and not worth our time.
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Comments
I can’t believe that many people trust the traditional media.
It has to be much worse, like 13#
33% of registered voters are Democrats, 34% Independents and 29% Republicans. So, it seems about right to me.
Thinking Americans haven’t ever trusted the ministry of truth.
Today, most media try to tell us what we should think, to that end they lie by omission and increasingly overtly.
They’ve always done this, to a degree. But the bias has become severe in recent years.
Obama tilted the Dims so far to the left that they let their masks slip.
Trump called them out for their naked bias, and in doing so enraged them and now they’re waging full-out ideological war.
Allowing the Commies to “cry uncle” when Joe McCarthy was rooting them out of our society was a grave mistake.
If HUAC hadn’t made a clown show of themselves, McCarthy may have been taken more seriously. Too many conflate the two.
We need a new McCarthy like person to cut Marxists out of the system. They want to cancel, we should return the favor ten fold.
Agree, no one I know believes these partisan hacks. I haven’t watched Meet the Press since Tim Russell passed. The Sunday morning shows are pathetic.
Reading the quotes from the Communist propagandists in Mary’s post is like an out-of-body experience. It is absolutely surreal to hear the Joseph Goebbels wannabes semi-admit the credibility problem and then pledge to double down on the exact same things that wrecked their credibility (I suspect that the real numbers are much worse, and that the journos are sandbagging the negative polls – again).
But ultimately doesn’t matter whether or not you trust social media or the Joseph Goebbels media. If the Communists who seized power yesterday have their way, very soon there will be NO independent media, NO free speech, NO Bill of Rights, NO due process. Just the Big Lie.
From the article: “As vaccine rumor hunter Heidi Larson puts it, “we don’t have a misinformation problem, we have a trust problem.”
No, you have a trust problem because you have a misinformation problem. It’s your own fault. There is a reason CNN has been trending downward for years.
There is none so blind as he who will not see.
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BOOM. THIS. All of this.
Did they get teh same pollsters that did the election? There is no way over 20% of the country buys the Propgadna machines lies.
The same people who answer landline phones (mostly the elderly) watch the network news on TV and read newspapers.
The polls have been repeatedly shown to be garbage. So why report on or trust these numbers here? What agenda are they trying to push?
I don’t believe the trust number can possibly be that high. Most people have realized that the media no longer report but they advocate. Truth be damned.
I’m not sure that “trust” is what’s being measured. Even a diehard progressive, if sane, cannot trust the media when it lies, even if those lies serve said progressive’s politics. I think the 46% are actually saying “the media are our political allies”, not that they believe what the media says to be actually truthful.
I read an interesting article that says it takes an average of 50 months to radicalize someone to violence. That is exactly what the MSM is doing. When they continuously publish insanely critical articles about people or organizations, they are radicalizing the fringe to violence.
And, I think that is what they are hoping for.
This must be fake news – 46% is way too high.
(See what I did there? (;>0)
Too much opinion mixed with fact. And yes some news outlets are notorious for spewing lies; im looking at you Fox.
Id also like to see more balance in news programs, it would be nice to see a discussion with counter points.
To be honest if i want something of depth im looking at podcasts these days, more time for debate and analysis.
Remember when Fox spent months on the Russian Collusion Hoax? Ooh, and how they spent months on the Fine People Hoax? Or, how they spent months saying he called immigrants animals because he called MS-13 animals?
Why would I waste my time on Fox? It’s presenters are almost universally full of shit. I don’t see the point in a Network so notorious for basically making shit up.
Look back in the mirror, lefty troll. No one believes your BS fake concern act.
Fox News was probably the most accurate major news outlet, until they went to the dark side during the last Presidential campaign. That being said, all major news outlets have to tailor their business model to the consumer base.
Fox had a very unique business model. It was designed to appeal to the ideological outlook of the dominant demographic in various time slots. The Fox day usually started off with reporting slanted toward the middle class, moderate and conservative viewer, who was getting ready to go to work. The its reporting became more liberal Progressive in orientation and presentation, until the 4pm business report. After the 5pm entertainment hours, the next two hours were geared to be slanted along more centrist lines. The prime time broadcasts, even those hosted by pundits with liberal bents, were geared to a more conservative audience. Weekends were also the realm of more liberal reporting and analysis, with the exception of very early morning news shows. The reporting was always accurate, but the amount of content and the presentation varied based upon a set business formula. It was a brilliant business model and a resounding success. Now, the ownership and management were still liberal, in their ideologies. But, Fox made the mistake of allowing itself to become an active participant in an ideological political arena and is now paying a stiff price for that. The networks which have been ideological mouthpieces for the last 20 years are seeing no backlash from their viewers, as they were merely echo chambers for that consumer base.
Now, as to the accuracy of the facts presented by Fox News, it has the best track record of any major news organization, by far. The vast majority of the reporting by Fox has proven to be accurate. Even most of their analysis has been proven accurate. But, Fox was home to a much more savvy news consumer base. When they went off the accurate, factual reservation and into the Progressive ideological forest, those consumers simply lost faith in them and left. A classic example of how to destroy a successful business model by ignoring your consumer base. Just like the new American government model.
@ Mac45
How have you determined that Fox is the most accurate? I hadn’t realised that any studies had been done?
Didn’t you learn anything from the last year? You can not depend upon “studies” for anything, unless you personally examine their methodology and test their conclusions.
Now, based solely on the fact that no matter how much evidence was presented that there was NO Russia-Trump collusion was presented, only FOX News reported that it was, in actual fact, a hoax. To make it wore, Fox began questioning the hoax, almost immediately, after Trump was inaugurated.
Really?! I don’t watch TV news, so I have no real idea what any of them are reporting, but that is very much not my impression. Can you give a few examples of lies FOX “spewed” and “shit” that it “basically made up”? And compare that to all the lies the other networks spewed, such as the Russia hoax, the “White supremacists in the White House” hoax, the BLM hoax, the “Trump dissed war dead” hoax, the “Trump praised nazis” hoax, the… oh, I can’t even remember 90% of them, but the constant fodder of the last four years. Or going back, the “TEA Party movement is racist / violent” hoax, the TANG hoax against Bush, etc. etc. ad nauseam, all the way back to the Tet Offensive hoax perpetrated by Cronkite et al, and the Winter Soldier hoax by Kerry.
Hmm, this is the second time you’ve mentioned podcasts as da bomb. Interesting. Couldn’t have anything to do with Amazon’s latest purchase of Wondery, could it? Just wondering who is paying you to troll here.
I’m actually surprised it isn’t lower. They must be counting the kool-aid drinking, CNN-watching zombies more than once.
Just lie election fraud.
I’ve gotten to the point where anything I hear on cbs etc.
I automatically assume the exact opposite is true.
They’re not called See-B.S. for nothing.
It’s worse than Viet Nam, when you had to watch at least two media sources to find the truth.
Today’s media is no different from historical news media. Since town criers first appeared, news media has shown inherent bias. If all that a media outlet did was to accurately report news, then there would be one newspaper per town. But, that is not the case. The news business has always been based upon sensationalism and has always reflected the ideological leanings of the ownership of the media organ. It was so bad, in this country that, after WWII, journalism actually embarked upon a decades long campaign to sell the American People the eyewash that journalists were actual impartial observers and reporters of fact. As a profession, this was never true. But, the consumer wanted to believe it.
There have been an incredible number of high profile scandals of news organs actually MANUFACTURING news, including creating and staging evidence to support their stories, the most. Perhaps the best illustration of journalists and journalistic organs using created analisys to sell a specfic point of view was Walter Cronkite’s reporting post-Tet Offensive, in 1968. On th ground in Vietnam, he reported that the South Vietnam government and the US military had pulled off a resounding victory. They had destroyed the Viet Cong, as a power, both militarily andhad so weakened the NVA tht it could not lnger defend North Vietnam from invasion. A week later, in his studio in New York City, he reported just the opposite. Tet was a victory for the North and the Viet Cong was still a viable entity. Now, we know from histtorical FACT, that the first report accurately reported the thrue facts. The second report was politicl hogwash, probably written by the producers at CBS. Even General Giap, the commanding officer of the NVA and premier NV military strtegist stated, years later, that had the US and SV moved on the North, immediately after Tet, the North would have had no choice but to sue for peace. Instead, the fallout from the second report from the most trusted newsman in the US, caused tthe US government to hold back giving the NVA a chance to rebuild. Even Cronkite admitted, years later, that his second report was wrong. The point here is, that the news media has always been used to mold public opinion for political purposes. It is used, at best, to filter facts pressented to the consumer and, at worst, manufacture facts to sway the consumer.
Then we have the Rashoman Effect. This is where the observer views facts through the prism of his or her own bias and prejudice, then reports the event from a biased perspective. This is a normall human trait. And, it is the reason why investigators are trained to collect ALL evidence and facts and then see where these lead them, rather than filtering facts to support a predetermined theory or conclusion.
No single source of information should ever be trusted totally. And, sources which present less data are less reliable.
“No single source of information should ever be trusted totally. And, sources which present less data are less reliable.”
Couldn’t agree more, well said
Interesting set of comments by the way
It was BS that politicians tied our military’s hands behind their backs. If we are going to wage war, it should be all out to win. I don’t think we should be wringing our hands about colleterial damage. In fact, moving to a decisive defeat is probably the most humane form of war.
JusticeDelivered
You can’t win a kinetic war on an ideology. We are afraid to acknowledge that the ideology in question, which motivated certain adherents to attack us, is the true enemy. The best way to defend against that enemy is to exclude its adherents. However, adherents of that ideolgy who are already here have the same rights as everyome else, including practicing their “religion” so long as they do it peacefully.
When it is clear that if adherent’s of a specific ideology place that ideology above assimilation, then no more should be allowed entry.
If an illegitimate administration allows such entry, then it may well be necessary to expel them after the illegitimates have been vanquished.
It’s fundamentally a battle of ideas, some of it based on data some of it based on personal preference and a philosophical leaning. I don’t ascribe to the nomenclature being used such as ‘enemy’. That just isn’t the case, sure there is a divide in the ideas but the fundamental principles of living in a free democratic republican society should remain common features on both sides.
The battle of idea is won or lost by presenting more persuasive arguments. The current situation though means that this debate isn’t really happening because ideas on the left are being discussed in that forum alone and that applies to the right as well. In other words in order to win you have to persuade the other side with reason and logic.
The other side moved from words to violence and subversive cheating, I think that they will continue until the crap is kicked out of them.
Not when the other side cuts your head off.
@ Milhouse
This isn’t the French Revolution. Although I do appreciate the point if threat of violence is there then that’s no good. That applies to all sides. Hence why I’ve condemned at all occasions all acts of violence
You seriously associate head-cutting with the French Revolution?! Nothing later than that?! This is the 21st century, and decapitation is real.
I wish I could give your second reply in this subthread a thumbs up, Milhouse, but it’s too deeply nested and the button isn’t available.
Under ideal circumstances any battle of ideas is won when your opposition deems that accepting your position is in their best interest. This usually involves some measure of compromise, unless it can be shown beyond all doubt that one point of view is totally wrong.
Unfortunately, the current clash of ideas is:
1) so diametrically opposed and
2) one side is totally opposed to any compromise
making it impossible for any compromise to occur.
The current conflict boils down to power and the sharing of that power. On one side we have the Establishment. These people have amassed almost all of the financial and political power available. This leaves its opposition with almost no power. The only power that the anti-Establishment side had was the ballot box and armed violence. They had been very patient in waiting for the Establishment to come to some form of compromise. The Establishment not only refused to compromise, by listening to the opposition, but went so far as to strip them of one of their two remaining power bases, the ballot box. You can not negotiate, if one party refuses to even come to the table.
Now, there are several historical models for what happens when the side in power refuses to negotiate. One of those is the French Revolution. Another is the American Revolution. Now, as the American Revolution actually happened outside the host nation, the French Revolution is closer to the conditions existing in the USA, at this time.
This is all about power. One group has stripped nearly all of the power from the rest of the nation and is refusing to share any of it. They have essentially said, if you want it, you have to take it. And, we are going to do everything that we can, including lying, cheating and stealing, to stop you from gaining any power. They threw out the rule book. Now, the opposition is free yo do whatever it wants to achieve its goals, just like the Establishment. And that is why we see the media arm of the Establishment vilifying the opposition and attempting to disarm them. It is why we see 25000 military troops in Washington to control a crowd of 2500 people on inauguration day.
There is more than one way to negotiate, after all.
RoE is a fact of life. No matter what rules one sets. I can state from fist hand experience that my first deployment to Iraq Feb 04-05 we had a much different RoE post Fallujah than upon arrival.
My second Iraq deployment to Ramadi AUG 06- NOV 07 our RoE was even less restrictive. We certainly didn’t have our hands tied.
I can’t speak to every area of operation, the conditions and threat level differs as does the RoE. It should in order to meet the local situation. Some areas of Iraq were, at points in time, largely speaking, peaceful and didn’t require the same RoE.
FYI the first rule in fighting an insurgency is to not create !ore insurgents by using unnecessarily heavy handed tactics. You don’t do a search by shooting some guys goats or sheep, busting up his house and generally acting like an asshole.
That kind of thing PO the locals, making them more likely to tacitly support or actually join in attacks. Totally counterproductive. That isn’t to say we should comprise the security of our Troops. It is very possible to be aggressive and dominant in the battlespace without being a deliberately offensive asshole when conducting operations.
When your grandmother or whomever told you to ‘catch more flies with honey than with vinegar’ they were correct.
I don’t trust the Edelman Trust Barometer.
Edelman is a large PR firm.
Most PR hacks have very fluid ethics and should not be trusted.
Back when network news was half an hour per night a one hour show on Sunday was important, now with the 24 networks and other methods to deliver content those shows are barely relevant. It is just some way to keep their highly overpaid hosts on the air.
No way somebody like Chris Wallace could do an hour a day, five days a week, Maragaret Brennan, George S. Chuck Todd tries to do a daily show and it is a clown show.
Even media is subject to business economics. Media economics will eventually kill them. The truth is that they are becoming increasingly irrelevant.
I like to think I’m helping to push them into irrelevancy and hopefully bankruptcy by not watching anything on tv networks. No football, no sitcoms. Nothing. When the Chicago Bears played a couple weeks ago I was tempted to break my year long moratorium and watch but stayed strong and listened to it on am radio instead. Now the Bears are done and so am I for this year. Maybe next year I won’t even listen. Games are tedious and boring anyway.
Same for me, today everything they say and do is unadulterated BS.
If you don’t watch you won’t know what company’s advertise therefore boycot.
And how many trust polls?
Polling companies do not work for free. Someone pays them. If the customer is keeping the results internal [subject of course to internal company politics] the polling company is more likely to attempt to come up with true information.
If the customer commissions the polls with the intention of releasing it publicly, said release is exclusively for the benefit of the customer. The polling company will skew things to please the customer, within the bounds of not being a ludicrous and unbelievable result. This poll was commissioned for public release, and may have stepped over those bounds.
Subotai Bahadur
Maybe try “merely putting truthful information in front of the public”, and see how that goes. It’ll take a while for people to catch on to what’s happening, but if you do it consistently for long enough people will notice and you won’t need to do anything more to have it widely accepted.
How it works: Media outlets can continue to report reliable facts, but that won’t turn the trend around on its own. What’s needed is for trusted institutions to visibly embrace the news media.As Alice put it, if you haven’t had any tea you can’t have more, and if haven’t been reporting reliable facts you can’t continue to do so. If you don’t start doing so then “trusted institutions” that embrace you will quickly lose that trust and be useless to you. If you start telling the truth then truly trustworthy institutions will automatically embrace you, and with or without them the public will eventually get the message.
Oops. Try again.
Maybe try “merely putting truthful information in front of the public”, and see how that goes. It’ll take a while for people to catch on to what’s happening, but if you do it consistently for long enough people will notice and you won’t need to do anything more to have it widely accepted.
As Alice put it, if you haven’t had any tea you can’t have more, and if haven’t been reporting reliable facts you can’t continue to do so. If you don’t start doing so then “trusted institutions” that embrace you will quickly lose that trust and be useless to you. If you start telling the truth then truly trustworthy institutions will automatically embrace you, and with or without them the public will eventually get the message.
Demos-cracy is smothered under a veil, aborted behind a wall, confused in a narrative that speaks truth to facts. h/t WaPo
“58% think that “most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.””
In general it’s much more simple than that.
News organizations are more concerned with attracting advertiser dollars than with informing the public.
They get this by supporting the causes and agendas favored by their top advertisers. This pushes them towards polarization, since you don’t want to piss off one of your advertisers by reporting something that another one doesn’t like, so you cater to advertisers on one end of the political spectrum or the other.
“Just report the facts.”
OK, but which facts? Bias can appear not only through the manner in which facts are presented and/or interpreted, but also in what they deign to report vs. what they choose to ignore.
The higher media trust is the worst off we all are.
These same people also believe that Jerry Springer and Maury Povich host “reality programing”.
Journalism has been destroyed by a perfect storm.
The internet broke their business model by creating the expectation that information should be free. People have to eat. This has led to “outrage journalism” and the law of supply and demand has led to increasing the “supply” by any means necessary.
The new media business model includes supplying their customers with what they want to hear rather than the truth. Mac45 describes this well.
The takeover of the government monopoly bureaucratic “public” indoctrination “school” system by the atheist left has been aided and abetted by parents who are willfully ignorant of the resulting damage so as to avoid taking responsibility for the raising of their children. And the churches have failed to raise the alarm because they didn’t want to offend the parents and public school employees in their congregations. This has resulted in the creation of a populace which is ready to believe the utopian lies of the atheist left.
Every time I have looked at a US flag for the last 10+ years I have asked the question, “Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave?” At this moment, I think the answer may be no – we are no longer worthy of the grace given by God in the founding of this country. However, God is sovereign over the affairs of men, and it is possible that by his grace we may recover. It is always true that by his grace we may be saved.