An American voter holds a “Honest Journalism is Dead” sign at a rally.
Republicans have long argued that the American “mainstream” media was bias and unethical. Americans’ trust and confidence in the media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” has dropped to its lowest level ever measured by Gallup since they began asking this question in 1972. Now, a new [content_tooltip id=”39930″ title=”Gallup”] finds only 32% say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media, down 8 percentage points from last year.
To be fair, the bias isn’t only perceived to be just coming from known leftwing outlets anymore. As People’s Pundit Daily recently reported, Fox News isn’t immune from Americans’ distrust and confidence. The YouGov BrandIndex found the Fox News brand image began tanking among their core viewership immediately after the first debate, at which anchor-slash-moderator Bret Baier pulled the “ask the candidates for a show of hands” routine. Megyn Kelly proceeded to ask Texas Sen. Ted Cruz a ridiculous question that seemed to insinuate he believes he had a direct line to God.
Nevertheless, Republicans have certainly fueled the decline, though independents are closely trailing behind them in having almost no trust and confidence. Democrats have historically expressed more trust in the media than Republicans, save for brief period in 2000 when the two parties were most similiar. Fifty-three (53%) of Democrats and 47% of Republicans had trust in the media.
Democrats’ (51%) and independents’ trust in the media has declined less than Republicans, with Democrats falling from 55% last year. Independents fell to 30% from 33% last year and Republicans tanked from 32% to 14%.
While the mediates are frantically blaming conspiracy theorists and social media for these results, they are hardly innocent. Social media is simply changing the game. No longer can CBS News get away with editing Bill Clinton making Freudian slips about his wife’s health or behind the scenes handshaking to craft false narratives.
For instance, the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks released some 20,000 emails showing corruption and collaboration between the Democratic National Committee and media outlets such as The Washington Post, NBC News and Politico. Greg Sargent at The Washington Post was literally writing whatever the DNC gave him and and Ken Vogel at Politico was using the DNC as a proofreader before his editor.
Yet, not a single one of the journalists was reprimanded by the outlets, who have dropped all pretenses in their virtuous effort to stop Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
