Culture Trust in news collapses to historic low

Americans' confidence in newspapers and television news has plummeted to an all-time low, according to the latest annual Gallup survey of trust in U.S. institutions.
Why it matters: The erosion of trust in media is one of the most significant signs of deepening polarization in America.

• Political party affiliation has become the primary driver of opinions about the media's trustworthiness, as Gallup has noted.
• A 2021 poll from Pew Research Center found that Republicans are far less likely to trust media sources that are considered "mainstream."

Details: Television news is today considered the second-least trusted institution in the country, following Congress, according to the poll.

• While other institutions have also experienced precipitous declines, including banks and the medical system, others — like small business and the military — have held steady over the past few decades.

By the numbers: The trust fall in the news media been driven mostly by Republicans, according to the data.

• Just 5% of Republicans said they had "a great deal or quite a lot of confidence" in newspapers, compared to 35% of Democrats.
• Only 8% of Republicans said they had "a great deal or quite a lot of confidence" in TV news, compared to 20% of Democrats.
• Independents' views are generally closer to Republicans'.

The big picture: The media trust gap between Democrats and Republicans began to widen during the the Bush and Obama administrations, but grew dramatically during the Trump era and has continued to widen.

• Censorship and media bias have become a rallying cry among conservatives, prompting a slew of new media and tech investments, including alternative social media networks, entertainment companies and podcast networks.

Americans' trust in mass media

Between the lines: The lack of trust in traditional news institutions is growing as partisan voices become more accessible online.

• Data and experts suggest the public struggles to distinguish fact-based journalism from opinion content online.
• The standards used by traditional media outlets — like fact-checking, bylines, datelines, and corrections — have not been fully-adopted by online news commentators on blogs, podcasts and social media.

Yes, but: The internet can't be fully blamed for the erosion of media trust. And distrust in traditional institutions could force them to reckon with institutional problems, like a lack of diversity.

• Semafor's Ben Smith noted on stage Thursday at an event in Washington that the "single most important factor" in media distrust was "the horrible coverage" in the run-up to the Iraq war and "the disastrous media coverage in the years after 9/11," when television and newspapers were still the dominant forms of news.
• Politico founding editor and editorial chairman John Harris reminded Smith on stage that "in the old days," a handful of people at a small number of outlets had all the agenda-setting power and they "would’ve all been white men."
• "All of us have biases and that maybe true objectivity is, what does your newsroom look like? How diverse is it?" said Al Jazeera English host Femi Oke at the event.

Article

 

[Blewberry Nausea]

The news isn’t about telling the facts and while it maybe never was it sure has gotten worse in hiding that where every article now shows blatantly how they want to sell you a narrative. Even non mainstream media has adopted this because they figure if the big dogs are selling a narrative well the only way to fight it is to sell the opposite narrative. There are very few entities just dealing with the facts of a story and not trying to insert bias like calling someone conservative ’controversial’ or a liberal a ‘loony’.

I miss Walter Conkrite.

 

[Coldgrip]

I miss Walter Conkrite.

You mean the nigger that lied through his teeth about the Vietnam war? Fuck that guy.

 

[Meat Target]

The thing is, journalism has virtually always had a history of being less than reputable. Folks want to pretend that there was some glorious, halcyon days where journalists were honorable scribes devoted to sharing the truth and informing the masses when that was never the case. Also, the idea of 'objective' journalism is a fucking flawed one. No matter what your perspective or intentions are, you're going to be having some bias or subjectivity creep into your reporting. It's impossible and a ridiculous standard.

It's better to describe journalism as a quagmire of bullshit with small islands of folks endeavoring to actually provide solid, reliable journalism. Unfortunately, the problem is that the hackneyed methods are far easier to churn out, generate a better response and so forth. Or it has been. Now, folks are more informed and media savvy than they've ever been.

Also, there's just a general apathy/distaste for 'credible' or solid journalism. One site I liked to visit, longform.org, used to be a curated site of in-depth, long form reporting. They stopped doing that this year.



Distrust in traditional institutions exists because a) you haven't gotten with the fucking times, b) you're putting a priority on 'diversity hires' over qualified hires, c) you're in cost cutting mode, downsizing departments and outsourcing shit like local reporting to cities thousands of miles away, d) you're in the business of agenda setting vs investigating/reporting (eg, the New York Times.)

The navel gazing in this is ridiculous.

99% of journalism's fart-huffing sanctimoniousness comes from LARPing as Woodward and Bernstein.

 

[Blewberry Nausea]

You mean the nigger that lied through his teeth about the Vietnam war? Fuck that guy.

Well if he did lie and was not like I thought he was then people sure are working to clean his image. But that was all before my time and like I said even if the media was always full of faggots pushing a narrative they at least seem more obvious about it nowadays or I think so at least. Could just be from living now as opposed to 1967

 

[verissimus]

I find it ironically amusing how concerned these people are with traditional [journalistic] institutions. Because the only kind of older institutions that shouldn't be questioned are those.

 

[potato fan]

for me the it started with the Zimmerman case coverage by CNN and since then I started paying notice to what media are doing. "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests" was coup the grace, since then I'd trust a gypsy before I'd trust a journalist

 

[Ukraine is Big Gay]

When "Don't believe your lying eyes." became a modus operandi and not just a mocking statement.

It's almost surreal to see a video clip of any big event or chimpout or shooting or incident without a single solitary edit, first on the shitposting forums or backalleys of the internet. And it's already internet autist looked over and detailed to exhaustion in 48 hours.

Then a week late to the show the news shows it spliced up, remixed, abridged and reduced to a series of stills. Missing sections and more with the most luke warm nada nothing takes barely related to the event at hand while some negative charisma rocking dipshit is flailing and pointing to the footage at a blurry zoomed in spot like we're trying to find goddamn bigfoot.
Then it cuts to a panel of experts familiar with matters to say more unrelated bullshit that didn't happen or has nothing to do with anything.

There isn't actually news on the news, it's a glorified reaction channel for boomers.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Zero wouldn't be low enough.

 

[verissimus]

There isn't actually news on the news, it's a glorified reaction channel for boomers.

The money shot right there.

 

[Slimy Time]

for me the it started with the Zimmerman case coverage by CNN and since then I started paying notice to what media are doing. "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests" was coup the grace, since then I'd trust a gypsy before I'd trust a journalist

Same here, that was the "hold on, these guys are painting a narrative and manipulating pictures to sell a story". I don't think this all time low trust in media is a sudden thing, but the decades of the media (not just in the UK, all over) becoming brazen with their spin, and very open with their disdain for ordinary people/people not in those journalist ivory towers.

Trump getting into power and coining the term "fake news", whether people like him or not, support him or not, it started pushing this idea of "check these guys on what they are saying, don't trust them" mainstream. Then we had his presidency where the media really lost the plot, the two scoops shit, the "he dumped fish food in one go when he was in Japan", and all these narratives, while poo-pooing other important lines.

Then we had covid and this narrative of "mask up/stay at home", completely contradicted during the summer of love with "fiery but peaceful protests", shit with guys like Cuomo and Piers Morgan being utter corrupt cunts, and now they are running damage control for Brandon and saying the quiet part out loud.

And here we are in 2022, and the media has done nothing to earn our trust back. I don't watch news programmes, and probably never well. Journalists are lower than dogshit at this point.

 

[Rudolf's Friend]

The 24-hour news cycle and dedicated news channels were a mistake.

 

[mr.moon1488]

I'd be pretty white-pilled about this except for the fact that the US is so sectarian that you know the trust in media would be about 99% if you isolated any given network to their own viewership.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

Press came to our lab this one time.
Us: ‘so we have these mice that usually die of cancer in 100 days and now after we knocked out this other gene they live to 200 days which is still dying early for a mouse, but it means that other gene is a potential chemo target. Here is a press release written in words of two syllables or less that can explain it to the retarded, and even you.’
Media: LAB CURES CaNCER AND DEATH!
I refused to be interviewed or photographed because I knew they do it. The guy was almost in tears becasue he wanted the ‘female scientist’ angle.

I knew some media that slandered a principal because he didn’t cave in to a rich parents demands. The same principal saved kids lives be implementing an active shooter policy and was one of the few that actually gave a fuck about kids futures. Most admins are just there to coast.

 

[whatever I feel like]

I remember when everyone on both sides thought that the media was full of shit. The common refrain was "notice how wrong they are when talking about a topic you are knowledgeable about, now think about everything else they print." Funny how that all faded away as the partisan division on media opinion became stronger.

 

[Fomo Hoire]

The common refrain was "notice how wrong they are when talking about a topic you are knowledgeable about, now think about everything else they print."

Now that people are failing step 2,we have the Gellman Amnesia Effect.

 

[The Ugly One]

I'm a bleeding heart lib. My GF was shocked when I demonstrated how slanted the news articles published by the wapo/nyt were. It's more subtle than fox news, but it's obviously there.

The coverage of trans issues has really woken people up to this on the left. Story after story published about sports were obviously lying and using bad sources to pretend trans participation had any merit.

Edit: Like Fauci and masks. They never admitted that he lied. It doesn't matter if he had a justification for lying. He lied right at the beginning of the pandemic in a major way. He proved you couldn't fully trust the government on this. Never saw that acknowledged in news articles covering people that refused the vaccine or to wear masks. I'd even bet some of the quoted people said it, and they just opted to not use those quotes.

A year and a half in, I had to spend a couple of minutes showing my GF where he said it.

I got a lib friend of mine to come around on Citizens United by telling him I wouldn't argue with him until he read the decision. He did, and realized that not only was it was a well-written decision, but the media was lying about what it said.

 

[TurdFondler]

Years of peddling 24hour non news, reducing headlines to clickbait titles and an ever deteriorating journalistic lexicon to accommodate the average retard's comprehension, now they're surprised?

 

[The Ugly One]

Well if he did lie and was not like I thought he was then people sure are working to clean his image. But that was all before my time and like I said even if the media was always full of faggots pushing a narrative they at least seem more obvious about it nowadays or I think so at least. Could just be from living now as opposed to 1967

The Tet Offensive was a massive tactical defeat for the Communists and resulted in the Viet Cong being almost completely wiped out as an operating force. However, the USA took a lot of casualties, and this was when the media realized that Americans' casket tolerance is pretty low and can be effectively exploited to make any battle that wasn't an absolutely lopsided victory appear to be a humiliating defeat.

 

[notafederalagent]

He did, and realized that not only was it was a well-written decision, but the media was lying about what it said.

For a recent example, just take a look how the media pushed "Don't Say Gay" instead of actually calling it what it is.

 

[Dracula's Spirit Animal]

What the fuck is wrong with Democrats? No wonder they keep falling for hoaxes.

It makes sense. Tjhe news is saying what they already believe or want to be true, so they have a higher trust in it. If the news was pro-Trump, for instance, the Republican numbers would jump, regardless of how factual the news actually was.