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The Media United States

Media Confidence Ratings at Record Lows (gallup.com) 326

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Gallup: Americans' confidence in two facets of the news media -- newspapers and television news -- has fallen to all-time low points. Just 16% of U.S. adults now say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers and 11% in television news. Both readings are down five percentage points since last year. Gallup has tracked Americans' confidence in newspapers since 1973 and television news since 1993 as part of its annual polling about major U.S. institutions. The latest readings are from a June 1-20 poll that saw declines in confidence ratings for 11 of the 16 institutions measured and no improvements for any. Television news and newspapers rank nearly at the bottom of that list of institutions, with only Congress garnering less confidence from the public than TV news. While these two news institutions have never earned high confidence ratings, they have fallen in the rankings in recent years.

A majority of Americans have expressed confidence in newspapers only once -- in 1979, when 51% did. But there is a wide margin between that and the second-highest readings of 39% in 1973 and 1990. The trend average for newspapers is 30%, well above the latest reading of 16%, which is the first time the measure has fallen below 20%. The percentage of Americans who say they have "very little" or volunteer that they have no confidence is currently the highest on record, at 46%. Confidence in television news has never been higher than its initial 46% reading in 1993 and has averaged 27%, considerably higher than the current 11%. This is the fourth consecutive year that confidence in TV news is below 20%. And for just the second time in the trend, a majority of Americans, 53%, now say they have very little or no confidence at all in TV news. Republicans' (5%) and independents' (12%) confidence in newspapers is the lowest on record for these party groups, while Democrats' (35%) has been lower in the past. Democrats' confidence in newspapers rose to the 42% to 46% range during the Donald Trump administration but fell when President Joe Biden took office.
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Media Confidence Ratings at Record Lows More

Media Confidence Ratings at Record Lows

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  • Not picking sides here... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RemindMeLater ( 7146661 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @04:26PM (#62720256)
    but in an era of "Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests" you'd have to be brain dead to trust the media. From either side. Even when they aren't actively distorting the news their selective reporting is just as bad.

    • Re:Not picking sides here... (Score:4, Funny)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @05:05PM (#62720350)

      Technically CNN+ hasn't reported any propaganda in 2+ months and counting.

    • Re:Not picking sides here... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by djinn6 ( 1868030 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @05:07PM (#62720360)

      They have lost sight of objectivity. Not once in recent memory have I looked at a news article from a major US news outlet and thought to myself, "they're giving the 'bad guys' credit when they do good things". Actually... Forget objectivity, I'd be happy with factual reporting. I want to read a story and not know what the reporter thought of it.

      Foreign news seems less susceptible to this. BBC can be biased, but nowhere near as bad as US ones. French, German and Japanese news outlets are still decent, at least when the story doesn't involve their local politics.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

      but in an era of "Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests" you'd have to be brain dead to trust the media. From either side. Even when they aren't actively distorting the news their selective reporting is just as bad.

      You've clearly picked a side. Maybe you're watching the wrong news? Here's a Harvard study showing BLM was pretty peaceful. https://www.radcliffe.harvard.... [harvard.edu]

      You know who burned down the Minneapolis police station? It wasn't radical leftists but a right winger from Texas. https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]

      What is Fox always yelling about out of state protestors causing problems? Well they were partially right.

      • You've clearly picked a side. Maybe you're watching the wrong news? Here's a Harvard study showing BLM was pretty peaceful. https://www.radcliffe.harvard.... [www.radcliffe.harvard] [harvard.edu]

        That's if you trust Harvard to be unbiased, the problem is everyone has lost trust, and we are just believing who we want to believe.

      • Re:Not picking sides here... (Score:5, Informative)

        by gizmo2199 ( 458329 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @08:27PM (#62720720) Homepage

        The vandalism and looting following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police will cost the insurance industry more than any other violent demonstrations in recent history, Axios has learned.
        Why it matters: The protests that took place in 140 U.S. cities this spring were mostly peaceful, but the arson, vandalism and looting that did occur will result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion of paid insurance claims — eclipsing the record set in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of the police officers who brutalized Rodney King.

        https://www.axios.com/2020/09/... [axios.com]

        As part of their investigation, federal agents studied videos posted on social media and from nearby city-owned surveillance cameras to try to identify others who helped burn the building.

        Co-conspirators Bryce Michael Williams, 27, Davon De-Andre Turner, 25, and Branden Michael Wolfe, 23, also pleaded guilty under plea agreements to one count each of conspiracy to commit arson for their individual roles in igniting the precinct fire. They have yet to be sentenced.

        A member of the Boogaloo Bois, a right-wing group intent on capitalizing on chaos and starting the next American civil war, has also been charged with assisting in the damage to the precinct that night. Ivan Harrison Hunter, a 26-year-old from Boerne, Texas, is accused of shooting 13 rounds from an AK-47-style rifle into the precinct while people were inside the building.

        Hmm, so it doesn't look like a "right-winger from Texas" burned down the police station after-all, But that's what happens when you get all your news from NPR, I guess.
        https://www.startribune.com/br... [startribune.com]

      • Re:Not picking sides here... (Score:5, Informative)

        by mrex ( 25183 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @08:51PM (#62720754)

        You've clearly picked a side. Maybe you're watching the wrong news? Here's a Harvard study showing BLM was pretty peaceful.

        Here's a study by the Insurance Information Institute that says the BLM riots could cost upwards of $2 billion to repair, making them the most costly riots in American history:

        https://www.foxbusiness.com/ec... [foxbusiness.com]

        • They were also the biggest protests in American history. Picking absolute numbers and pointing to superlatives is meaningless at best and deceptive at worst.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          So given that we have a study which says most of the rioting was the far right and the cops, and that the BLM protests were kick-started by a cop murdering a man, and the protests wouldn't be necessary if there wasn't systemic violence against black people...

          We should blame BLM?

          I vote for the money coming out of police budgets.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by mrex ( 25183 )

            You, uhh, you really think police (and the far right) caused most of the damage during the BLM riots?

  • Surprised it's that high (Score:3, Informative)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @04:28PM (#62720264) Homepage

    Pick your flavor, all major and most minor outlets today are pushing an agenda and not doing anything even approaching "journalism". I'm not sure we have journalists anymore; they're all propagandists.

    16% seems high, but I guess there are people who cling to their religion no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary.

    • Katy Tur (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RoccamOccam ( 953524 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @04:50PM (#62720312)

      In group text messages on March 3, 2021, Lis Smith (member of Andrew Cuomo political team) boasted how she was texting with “MSNBC Live” anchor/NBC News correspondent Katy Tur:

      “I’m texting w Katy Tur,” Smith wrote to the group. “Katy is saying my spin live. Like verbatim.”

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      I am sure we no longer have journalists in traditional news. They all either conformed and went along with the agenda or a few with principles like Glenn Greenwald went independent [substack.com].

  • I rate the Young Turks internet news program family highly. Politically, they're unapologetically left, but they will carve anybody, right or left, a new one when it's deserved. I trust them to deliver facts as they get them, and I enjoy the scathing criticism they've doled out to everybody from AOC and Joe Biden to Mitch McConnell and Jim Jordan. The ranting is annoying, but the content is reliable...and when they get something wrong, they don't just move on and pretend it never happened. They issue a c

    • Parody? Even on the occasions they admit being wrong, such as Cenk's house Armenian on Rittenhouse, it's so obviously wrong that it's either astonishing incompetence or lies. The best part is nothing is learnt - it's straight in to the new lie.

      They not always wrong - nobody is. They're a terrible source of news, frequently called out for at best taking the least charitable interpretation that suits them.

  • Media = Traditional News (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @04:48PM (#62720306)
    Don't try sugarcoat this, people are not doubting Joe Rogan or similar podcasters, it is traditional news organization that "mostly peaceful protesters" few too many times.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Joe Rogan? The guy who told "young, health" people not to get vaccinated? And then when he himself got COVID, he began a regimen including monoclonal antibodies, prednisone, azithromycin, NAD drip, a vitamin drip, as well as ivermectin.

      Yeah, that ivermectin, the one that veterinary suppliers ran out of.

  • How We Got Here (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @05:01PM (#62720340)

    If you think it's gotten bad in the industry that pimps propaganda for profit instead of truth and facts, you should see how fucked up politics is.

    In a Democracy, citizens deserve what they vote for. Don't like it? Learn to Vote Better. Yeah. It really still is that simple.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      Lol. Coke or Pepsi? You want something else? Not possible in any meaningful way. The Red and Blue have pulled that ladder up a LONG time ago. Gerrymandering, arbitrary procedural rules that are arcane as fuck, direct manipulation of ballots to make sure 3rd parties are excluded, etc, etc.

      • Lol. Coke or Pepsi? You want something else? Not possible in any meaningful way. The Red and Blue have pulled that ladder up a LONG time ago. Gerrymandering, arbitrary procedural rules that are arcane as fuck, direct manipulation of ballots to make sure 3rd parties are excluded, etc, etc.

        Coke and Pepsi, regardless of how unhealthy they are, are still valid products.

        There isn't a fucking thing valid about watching geriatric monkeys throw Twitter shit at each other, hoping that they can still get a cheerleading squad together in between games of Insider Monopoly.

      • This scene [youtube.com] from Zak McKracken illustrates pretty well how I feel about US voting.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ahodgson ( 74077 )

      Unfortunately it doesn't matter who I vote for if 50.2% of the population votes for the idiot with the best hair. Or, in my case, if Ontario votes for the idiot with the best hair hours before I even get to vote.

    • "Learn to Vote Better." It's a nice theory but it's unadulterated hogwash. Voting makes no difference at all.

      Try reading: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens https://scholar.princeton.edu/... [princeton.edu]

    • You actually have a choice now in the US? Did they change something while I wasn't looking?

  • Distrust is Profitable (Score:3)

    by jythie ( 914043 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @05:03PM (#62720344)
    So where did this distrust come from? Marketing. Individual outlets have found that 'everyone is lying except us!' gets eyeballs and advertisers... so now it is 'common sense', because that is what they tell us on TV.

  • What news? (Score:3)

    by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @05:12PM (#62720378)

    It's not news anymore... its entertainment. News has become the WWF of media, news isn't for getting a handle on the world around you, news is there to entertain you. And they are going to 'entertain' people by working them up and politicizing people and telling them lies or telling them what they want to hear.

    What people don't want to hear is reality, because reality is hard. It's hard to compromise, it's hard to let go of yourself and hear and respect other people.

  • No money in real journalism anymore .... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @05:22PM (#62720428) Journal

    It's no surprise people have little confidence in the mass media. The media essentially decided it wasn't profitable enough to make the effort to do real investigative reporting. The nightly news in my city simply goes after the low-hanging fruit. Report any shootings or house fires of note, take one "top story" as the headline news item. (Typically something people were already becoming aware of throughout the day and talking about.) Spend a bunch of time on sports and weather coverage, and close it out with some "feel good" fluff piece. If they make an effort to be known for going above and beyond that formula, it's something like a "You paid for it!" type of program, where one of the newscasters takes requests from viewers to look into claimed corruption/scams/poor use of tax dollars. Typically not bad stuff, but they only get resolution for most people by the mere fact a light was shone on the problem in the news so the perpetrator fixes things to avoid the bad P.R.

    The local newspapers are basically just regurgitating what comes off of the big newswires like AP or Reuters these days. They can't afford to hire writers who really investigate things to make their own unique stories.

    While it's popular to throw around the "fake news" label these days, I think that's a little inaccurate. I don't believe most of these news articles are so much intentionally faked as just poorly researched, biased and not factually complete. But people SHOULD be angry about that and calling it out when they run across it! Especially in areas like health or science news, this happens constantly. A reporter learns of a new study that makes a preliminary conclusion and proceeds to make a news story about the finding. The public hears it and thinks, "Oh! They've made this new discovery that X is true!" Nope! It's simply one group that got those results, which may still only be because they made some mistakes in their process or they failed to account for something causing the results they obtained. Then, the next time the news tells people about the topic? It's another group of researchers explaining how the previous conclusions of earlier studies were wrong. After enough of this, most people throw their hands in the air and say, "These scientists are morons. They don't know anything about this stuff. One week, they tell me one thing and the next, they tell me something contradicting it. It's all garbage! Fake news!"

    Really, it's just an utter failure to frame the findings correctly, as "preliminary information that's probably not nearly ready to draw conclusions from yet".

  • fall in the, verify then trust group. Journalism is dead!

  • Politics (Score:3)

    by fafalone ( 633739 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @07:58PM (#62720690)
    Everyone in this thread is running straight towards national partisan politics with the traditional issues, but does that really explain the 5% drop in a year? I don't think there's been anything to shift anyone's views on that in the past year, compared to years prior. The 2020-2021 drop has some plausible explanations, as does the last major change before that being 2016... but since then? People have largely dug in and decided on all the hot button issues of the day.
    But you know what Americans have an unhealthy obsession with? Celebrities. I'm going to make a no doubt controversial argument a big driver of the year over year change, especially since it only changed much among Independent/Democrat. I've seen quite a large number of people who had been following the media circus around the Depp/Heard defamation trial seriously reevaluating their trust in media after liberal media (mostly, Murdoch-owned outlets too) decided the outcome wasn't to their liking, and proceeding to attempt to blatantly start lying about the case and taking the side contrary to the jury finding and the overwhelming opinion (Democrats agreed 50%-17%, the remainder having no opinion, Independents 54-11, according to a YouGov poll) that formed since it was all televised and people watched the allegations get epically shredded.
    So you had tons of watch the media decide to start screaming misogyny and conservative conspiracy on a issue *without* an existing partisan divide (very few took MeToo 'false allegations do not exist'), and it was recognized as bullshit-- the media was going all in to defend an abuser making false allegations to preserve 'believe all woman [not named Tara Reade]' while telling millions of Democrats they were alt-right and shouldn't believe their lying eyes. This was happening right as the survey in media trust was being done (Survery ran 6/1-6/20, verdict was 6/1).
    Never underestimate how much Americans care about celebrity drama. I think the media largely did, not knowing just how many liberals had watched the trial.

  • Good (Score:2)

    by slazzy ( 864185 )
    Glad to hear there arenâ(TM)t as many MSM zombies as I thought. People seem to be waking up.

    • Nope. They're not. They lament and complain, then turn around and believe that bullshit again as long as it fits their preconceived opinion.

  • Maybe do journalism instead? (Score:3)

    by k6mfw ( 1182893 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @09:34PM (#62720844)
    While I have no journalism training or experience, I read someplace that journalist's job is to ask and write the who-what-why-when-where-how instead of creating a story with a protagonist as done with a novel. Some years ago I read reader's response in a magazine where he wrote Dan Rather and Barbara Walters are not journalists. He is a journalist because he walked the walk and talked the talk, interviewed more criminals and politicians than any else was willing to do. Maybe go back to that technique? Major news stations have foreign bureaus as done in the 20th century?

  • Confidence in media is like confidence in Congress. Every hates Congress, but the truth is that many love their own party and hate the opposition, with an opinion of the combined Congress representing the minimum of the opinions. Similarly, I imagine that the survey respondents love certain media companies and hate others but report a combined opinion of media representing the minimum opinion.

    • Not really. Frankly, if all of them croaked today, it's just a bunch of unemployables less in the country.

  • I could post a lengthy diatribe... (Score:3)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday July 21, 2022 @02:28AM (#62721224)

    ...but there is a 15 year old video that says it better [youtube.com] than I could what's wrong with the news these days.

  • Factual bias (Score:4)

    by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Thursday July 21, 2022 @09:40AM (#62721860)
    The main news organization I listen to is NPR, and while I trust them to generally report true information, I also trust them to report biased information. When they are noted as a factually accurate news organization with no further comment, it undermines my trust in the fact-checking or watchdog organization making that claim because it omits important information about their biases.

    NPR engages in factual reporting on issues of concern to left-leaning individuals from the perspective of left-leaning individuals. They don't lie, but they very rarely air stories of concern to other political interests, and their stories typically only explore the concerns of the left from the perspective of the left. It's rare to hear anything but token opposition that is generally undercut by the reporter the moment the speaker's dialog finishes. Opposing perspectives are also sometimes mischaracterized or omitted entirely.

    I think it's fine to have news media like this out there (though I would argue it should not be taxpayer-funded if it does not evenly represent the interests of taxpayers in the aggregate), but I think it's important to be honest and open about biases, which the media and the media watchdogs often are not. This is what undermines my trust more than anything, the implication that since the reporting is usually factually correct that no other noteworthy concerns could exist and that criticisms must be from the misinformed.

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